Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu to take charge of company's e-commerce business

By Mike Murphy

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder and Chief Executive Eddie Wu will take over as the head of the Chinese internet giant's core e-commerce group.

Wu will become CEO of Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba's domestic e-commerce unit, effective immediately, the company said in a statement Tuesday night.

Taobao and Tmall's previous CEO, Trudy Dai, will take a new internal role to help establish an asset-management company.

Wu took over as CEO of Alibaba Group (BABA) (HK:9988) in September, after Daniel Zhang stepped down. Wu is also in charge of Alibaba's cloud and AI unit.

"Eddie's leadership of both Alibaba Cloud and TTG will ensure total focus on, and significant and sustained investment in, our two core businesses of cloud computing and e-commerce, as well as enabling TTG to transform through technology innovation," Alibaba Group's Chairman Joe Tsai in an email to staff.

Analysts have recently soured on Alibaba, which has been surpassed by Pinduoduo and Temu parent company PDD (PDD) as China's most valuable e-commerce company. Alibaba announced a major overhaul earlier this year, reorganizing into six business units, in a move "designed to unlock shareholder value."

Alibaba's U.S.-traded shares are down about 14% year to date, compared to the S&P 500's SPX 24% gain this year.

-Mike Murphy

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12-19-23 2338ET

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