Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. recently announced the restructuring of its foreign and domestic e-commerce divisions and the appointment of a new chief financial officer.
The move comes as the company grapples with several challenges, including rising competition, a slowing economy, and regulatory scrutiny. To become more agile and accelerate growth, Alibaba revealed the development of two new entities to house its core e-commerce businesses: international digital commerce and China digital commerce.
Alibaba's global consumer-facing and wholesale businesses will be housed in the international digital commerce unit, which will include Alibaba.com, AliExpress, and Lazada. Jiang Fan, the former president of the Taobao and Tmall marketplaces, will lead the unit.
Toby Xu, the business's deputy chief financial officer, will take over Maggie Wu as the chief financial officer in April, the company announced, citing his hiring as part of the company's leadership succession strategy. Xu joined Alibaba three years ago from PWC and was promoted to deputy CFO in July this year.
Wu, who served as CFO of three Alibaba-related companies as they went public, will continue to be on Alibaba's board as an executive director.
It is worth noting that the e-commerce behemoth's Hong Kong-listed shares recently observed an 8% fall, mirroring Friday's losses in the US. Following Didi Global Inc's decision to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Chinese companies listed in the United States plummeted on fears of increased regulatory scrutiny at home.
Last month, the firm brought its annual revenue growth target to the lowest level since its initial public offering in 2014, and its marquee event, the online shopping festival Singles Day, saw sales growing at the slowest rate ever.
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