Alibaba Announce New CFO In Major Management Reshuffle

E-commerce giant, Alibaba has announced on Monday that different roles will be reassigned to four of its big executives as it reshuffles the management.

The e-commerce former chief financial officer, Maggie Wu will be replaced by the current deputy CFO, Toby Xu in April 2022. Wu will remain as a partner in Alibaba Part Partnership, an exclusive group of personnel with major influence on the company’s directions, and will remain as an executive director on the Alibaba board.

Wu joined Alibaba about 15 years ago and has played a significant role in Alibaba’s three public listings: Alibaba.com (the firm’s B2B marketplace) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, Alibaba Group Holding on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2019. The company is one of the U.S.-listed Chinese firms that have pursued secondary listings in Hong Kong amid rising U.S.-China tensions.

Alibab had gone through a major reshuffle in 2015 when Jack Ma passed the torch as CEO to Daniel Zhang and further appointed him as chairman in 2019.

“The announcement of Alibaba’s CFO transition today is the culmination of extensive preparation over many years and a part of Alibaba’s leadership succession planning,”

“The markets will always have ups and downs, but Alibaba has ambitious long-term goals. We are in a relay race and we must have new generations of talent to take the company forward. I trust Toby even more than I trusted myself when I first took up the CFO position years ago,” said Wu in a statement.

Toby Xu who has overseen several major deals at Alibaba joined the company from PwC three years ago and first appeared as deputy CFO at the firm’s investor day last year. Xu also oversees the company’s partnership with Starbucks in China.

Xu joined Alibaba from PwC three years ago and first appeared as deputy CFO at the firm’s investor day last year. He has overseen several major deals at Alibaba, including the e-commerce titan’s partnership with Starbucks in China.

In an internal letter, Alibaba also unveiled a major reorganization to buttress its two-pronged strategy of domestic and international e-commerce.

The brain behind the firm’s core revenue drivers, its consumer-facing marketplaces in China, for years, Jiang Fan will lead the newly-formed International Digital Commerce. The international unit includes Southeast Asia-focused Lazada, in which Alibaba acquired control in 2016.

“We will continue to focus on becoming a truly globalized company, and we believe that overseas markets present many exciting potential and opportunities for us to capture,” wrote Zhang in his letter.

The firm’s domestic consumer-oriented and wholesale marketplaces will be merged to form the new China Digital Commerce unit and come under the stewardship of Trudy Dai.

The firm’s domestic consumer-oriented and wholesale marketplaces will be merged to form the new China Digital Commerce unit and come under the stewardship of Trudy Dai. Dai has been spearheading two of Alibaba’s new growth drivers, Taobao Deals, its bazaar targeting lower-income demographics in China, and Taocaicai, its neighborhood grocery service.