Ma steps down at Alibaba, hands over reins to Zhang
BEIJING: About a year ago, Alibaba chairman Jack Ma said at the Summer Davos Forum that he would “…rather die on the beach than in his executive office”. Then, he announced his retirement date: September 10, 2019.
On Tuesday, Ma, 55, stepped down from the chairman’s post of Alibaba, handing over the reins of the $480 billion company to chief executive, Daniel Zhang.
China’s richest man, Ma’s individual worth is about $39 billion.
It’s his worth as China’s online and e-commerce icon, however, that earned him the epithet, “China’s Steve Jobs”.
“I think it will be very hard to replace somebody like Jack Ma,” said Rebecca Fannin, author of a book on China’s technology titans, told BBC.
“He is one of a kind. He is the Steve Jobs of China,” Fannin said.
Born in Hangzhou, Ma launched Alibaba in 1999 as an online market place, and then transformed it into an e-commerce giant over the years.
He had planned the retirement for years.
“It’s like weaning a child. It’s good for both the mother and the child. Even if her kid cried, she would not budge, as she knew it was a wise decision and a process of growing up,” the official news agency, Xinhua quoted him as saying after the announcement last year.
“Ma’s first major “letting-go” took place in 2013, when he stepped down as Alibaba’s chief executive,” the Xinhua report said.
“At the age of 54, I am a bit old in the internet industry, but quite young for many other sectors,” he had said.
“In the next 15 to 16 years, there’s still a lot of things I can do. I know it would be difficult for people at the age of 55 or 56, say 60, to leave. By then, you would no longer be sure about your future, and you would hang on,” he said.
“If I’m still around at the age of 80 or 90, and I sit on the beach, listening to the radio, and a news broadcast says that Alibaba had a good year, I think I will be very proud.”
In 2015, Ma had met Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to India.
Ma had then discussed how Alibaba could help empower small businesses in India. “Had a very good meeting with Jack Ma,” Modi had then tweeted.
Ma isn’t the only person to derive fabulous wealth from the Alibaba empire. The company’s trajectory at one point spawned at least 10 other billionaires across its ecosystem, from a parcel delivery company and supermarket to an online payments affiliate. Despite stepping down, Ma is expected to remain pivotal to a sprawling industrial machine with e-commerce at its heart.
“At this point, it’s still unlikely that Zhang would make important decisions without Ma’s support,” said Brock Silvers, managing director at Shanghai-based Kaiyuan Capital, an investment advisory firm.
Bloomberg contributed to this story.