Shares of
Alibaba
Group were falling on Monday after the company said former CEO Daniel Zhang was stepping down as head of the cloud business.
Zhang was due to stand down as CEO on Sunday to focus on the cloud unit. Eddie Wu, his successor as CEO, will now also oversee the cloud business as well. The unit is China’s largest provider of cloud computing services and is set to be spun off as the company separates into six parts.
Reuters and the South China Morning Post reported Zhang’s departure on Sunday, citing an internal memo at the company. Alibaba didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Barron’s.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares (ticker: 9988.HK) fell 2.7% on Monday. Its American depositary receipts were up 0.2% in premarket trading Monday.
Alibaba announced in June that Zhang would step down as CEO to lead the cloud unit as part of the company’s breakup. He became Alibaba CEO in 2015 and added the chairman role in 2019.
Alibaba said it would continue to execute the plan to spin off the Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group and that it will invest $1 billion in a technology group run by Zhang.
Write to Brian Swint at [email protected]
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