Ma is retiring from Alibaba Group
CEO will replace the company’s founder as executive chairman
HONG KONG >> Jack Ma formally retired Tuesday from Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant he founded that helped transform the way hundreds of millions of people shop and made him one of the world’s richest men.
But despite the elaborate celebrations the company held Tuesday to commemorate his departure, Ma isn’t going far.
On paper, Daniel Zhang, Alibaba’s chief executive, will succeed the 55-year-old Ma as executive chairman. Ma has said he will devote his time to philanthropy, especially rural education.
“I’m not going to stop doing things,” he told a women’s entrepreneurship event in late August. “Alibaba is but one of my dreams. I’m still young.”
Alibaba on Tuesday evening celebrated Ma’s retirement which also coincides with his birthday and the company’s 20th anniversary with 80,000 of its employees in the Olympic Stadium in Hangzhou, the eastern city where the company has its headquarters. Plans included a parade of staff members in costumes, music and skits onstage, according to an Alibaba spokesman.
Ma, however, will remain a considerable force at the company. He is a lifetime member of the Alibaba Partnership, a group of a few dozen
employees with tremendous power over the company’s board and leadership, as well as its bonus pool.
The partnership also holds sway over key licenses that Alibaba requires in order to do business on the mainland. While Alibaba is traded in New York and its shares are held by global investors, Beijing requires Chinese nationals to control licenses that many companies need to keep doing business there.
Perhaps most crucially, Ma will still control the parent company of Alipay, the Chinese online payment system used in many of Alibaba’s digital marketplaces. That business fiercely competes with WeChat, owned by Tencent Holdings, which has become a power in online payments in China, giving Ma a continuing challenge on the business front.
“As long as Jack Ma has the lifetime partnership, he will be in charge of the Alibaba empire,” Fang Xingdong, a Chinese internet veteran and sometime Alibaba critic, wrote on his social media WeChat account. Fang wrote that Tuesday marked Ma’s third “retirement.” The first was in 2006, when Ma relinquished his role as president, and the second in 2013, when the role he gave up was chief executive.
“I can’t help but wonder what Jack’s fourth retirement would be like,” he wrote.