The CEO of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, has chosen to step down from his leadership position at the e-commerce giant. The 48-year old corporate leader feels that younger people should now be placed at the top level in order to take care of the company’s matters. However, this does not mean that Ma’s role in Alibaba is about to end, as he will take the role of executive chairman in the group after announcing his successor on May 10.
Ma, who has been known as one of the leading corporate bosses in China, founded and started Alibaba in 1999 to give his nation an online shopping site that could cater the huge potential and purchasing power in the country. According to Ma a majority of his fellow leaders in Alibaba were “born in the 1960s”, so they should also pass on their responsibilities to their younger colleagues.
Addressing the employees of Alibaba through an email that Reuters got a hold of on Tuesday, January 15, Mr. Ma stated, “As a founder CEO, stepping down … is a difficult decision. It’s not because I wanted to take things easy (though the job of Alibaba CEO is no easy task), it’s because I see that Alibaba’s young people have better, more brilliant, dreams than mine, and they are more capable of building a future that belongs to them”.
Ma admitted during an interview with The New York Times that he felt the strain. He said, “When I was 35, I was so energetic and fresh-thinking. I had nothing to worry about,” but he also said that “I will still be very active,” and “It is impossible for me to retire.” He is expected to handle broad strategic issues along with social and corporate development responsibilities, once he takes over executive chairman role.
This important shift in responsibilities was one of the moves which was declared in the previous week as part of the plan to divide the group into 25 small divisions so managers will have more flexibility. As far as these moves were concerned, they came after Alibaba struck a deal with Yahoo in the previous year, in which Ma’s company agreed to buy back half of its holdings from its U.S. based partner.
Source: TheGlobeand Mail
Photo: ChinaDaily
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