CEO Daniel Zhang to succeed Jack Ma as the new Chairman of Alibaba. September 10 is celebrated as Teacher’s day in China. Ma is a former English teacher, nicknamed ‘Teacher Ma’. He turned 55 today.
Alibaba’s Chairman Jack Ma stepped down today (September 10), handing the role over to the company’s current CEO Daniel Zhang. The retirement was announced an year ago.
A Communist Party member, Ma is China’s most famous entrepreneur and with a fortune of nearly $40 billion, the country’s richest man.
Ma will continue serving on Alibaba’s board until its annual general shareholders’ meeting next year.
He also remains a lifetime partner of Alibaba Partnership, a group drawn from the senior management ranks of Alibaba Group companies and affiliates that has the right to nominate up to simple majority of its board. In some situation he can appoint board member also.
“The one thing I can promise everyone is this: Alibaba was never about Jack Ma, but Jack Ma will forever belong to Alibaba.”
Jack Ma said in last year’s announcement .
Jack Ma left Alibaba’s CEO position in 2013 and was succeeded first by Jonathan Lu. In 2015 Lu was replaced by Zhang, the company’s former COO.
After CEO and now its chairman, Daniel Zhang has taken Alibaba’s reins as it copes with a slowdown in China’s e-commerce market after a decade of explosive growth.
BBC World reporter, Mariko Oi tweeted “Reporting on Jack Ma’s retirement & career advice, When you’re:
20-30, follow a good boss, join a good company to learn.
30-40, if you want to do something yourself, just do it.
40-50, focus on what you are good at.
50-60 train the next generation.
60+ spend time w grandkids.”
Reporting on Jack Ma’s retirement & career advice📺
— Mariko Oi 大井真理子 (@BBCMarikoOi) September 10, 2019
When you're:
20-30, follow a good boss, join a good company to learn.
30-40, if you want to do something yourself, just do it.
40-50, focus on what you are good at.
50-60 train the next generation.
60+ spend time w grandkids. pic.twitter.com/bOWNr9fUuY
The online retail landscape also now includes new players like Pinduoduo, which have gained an advantage by focusing on smaller cities, important growth markets for Internet companies.
One interesting fact about the day Ma chose for his retirement as chairman is that it is Teachers’ Day in China.
Jack Ma is a former English teacher who is still nicknamed “Teacher Ma” and has said that he plans to devote time to education philanthropy.
What next?
After two decades building Alibaba into a $460 billion business, Ma is now pivoting full time to philanthropy.
“Before I’m 70 years old, I can do something in other fields, in areas like education,” Ma said at an Alibaba event last September.
“Teachers always want their students to exceed them, so the responsible thing … for me and the company to do is to let younger, more talented people take over in leadership roles,” Ma said last year.
He started the Jack Ma Foundation in 2014, and has cited the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as an inspiration for his charitable endeavors.
“Jack has been signaling for some time his interests in philanthropy, environment, women’s empowerment, education and development,” said Duncan Clark, the author of “Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built.”
“Teachers always want their students to exceed them, so the responsible thing … for me and the company to do is to let younger, more talented people take over in leadership roles,” Ma said last September.
Last year, Ma spoke about the challenges for the future of education at the World Economic Forum, warning that “if we do not change the way we teach, 30 years later we will be in trouble.”
The current knowledge-based approach of teaching will “fail our kids” who will never be able to compete with machines, Ma said.
Children should be taught “soft skills” like independent thinking, values and teamwork, he added.
Supporting Women
Ma and Alibaba have hosted a biennial conference in China on women and entrepreneurship since 2015.
The events have drawn names such as Arianna Huffington and Vera Wang. This year’s conference included a video message from Rihanna.
Ma said that gender equality is one of the most-important issues in the 21st century, noting that “if you want your business to succeed, it is critical to appoint enough female leaders.”
“Women have always played an integral role in Alibaba since its establishment two decades ago,” Ma said at the conference last month, according to a report published by the company’s news site Alizila.
Most noteworthy, nearly half of Alibaba’s senior management team are women.
Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma: Leaving ‘on a high’
Ma was honored by the Chinese government last November as one of 100 people who had made “outstanding contributions” to China’s economic transformation in the past 4 decades.
The event was reported by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the ruling Communist Party, which outed Ma as a member.
The revelation came amid rising concern over the tighter grip being exerted on China’s private sector by the Communist Party under President Xi Jinping.
Ma is stepping away from Alibaba at a relatively young age. He has said in the past that he wants to retire earlier than Bill Gates, who stepped down as chairman of Microsoft at the age of 58 in 2014.
