ALIBABA Group Holding Ltd. has replaced one of its most experienced executives at the helm of e-commerce and plans to create a firm to oversee its investment assets around the world, the latest in a series of sweeping changes to roil the once-dominant Chinese online juggernaut. The company said yesterday CEO Eddie Wu will take over as chief executive of domestic e-commerce arm Taobao and Tmall Group effective immediately, boosting his direct control over the group’s core businesses. Trudy Dai, previously the Taobao and Tmall CEO and one of an inner circle of partners present when Jack Ma founded the company in 1999, would shift roles to assist in the establishment of a new asset management company around the world “as part of ongoing efforts to improve return on capital,” according to an internal company letter signed by Joseph Tsai, who took over as group chairman from previous head Daniel Zhang in September. Alibaba’s investments include stakes in startups as well as businesses from entertainment to physical retail. Wu, who has been group CEO since September, also took over from Zhang as the company’s cloud business CEO that month. The latest appointment means Wu now leads the overall group as well as its two most important business divisions — cloud and domestic e-commerce. The surprise decision comes as Alibaba strives to rejuvenate a company after mis-steps have eroded its market dominance in past years. Dai’s departure marks the latest shakeup at the Chinese corporate icon, which has endured post-COVID consumption volatility and the surprise ascent of rivals including PDD Holdings Inc. and ByteDance Ltd. Wu, who himself took over Alibaba just months ago, intends to cultivate new managers to steer his firm for the longer term. The decisions for now may reflect a desire to take direct control of under-performing divisions, while exploring sales of businesses considered less essential to the main cloud, retail and logistics divisions. “Alibaba wants to go into battle with a light pack, and this is a way to handle a lot of its more burdensome and non-core businesses,” said Li Chengdong, head of Beijing-based Haitun. “These hinder the overall competitiveness and flexibility of the company.” (SD-Agencies) | 