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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd replaced one of its most experienced executives at the helm of e-commerce and plans to create a firm to oversee its investment assets around the world, the latest in a series of sweeping changes to roil the once-dominant Chinese online juggernaut.
Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu will replace Trudy Dai, one of an inner circle of partners present when Jack Ma founded the company in 1999, as head of the division that runs Alibaba’s main Chinese e-commerce platforms Tmall and Taobao. Dai will instead help set up an entity to manage some of its vast portfolio of assets around the world. Alibaba, whose investments include stakes in startups as well as businesses from entertainment to physical retail, described that entity as overseeing the company’s non-core assets without elaborating.
The surprise decision comes as Alibaba strives to rejuvenate a company after a series of mis-steps and regulatory scrutiny has eroded its market dominance in past years.
Dai’s departure marks the latest shakeup at the Chinese corporate icon, which has endured post-Covid consumption volatility, a bruising years-long government crackdown and — most recently — the surprise ascent of rivals including PDD Holdings and ByteDance.
Once the most valuable company in China, Alibaba has fallen behind games and social media leader Tencent. It lost its position as China’s most valuable e-commerce operator to eight-year-old upstart PDD, which has far outstripped Alibaba’s growth with the help of hit shopping app Temu.