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Alibaba’s new divide-and-conquer strategy is already coming to an end: increasing competition forces group CEO Eddie Wu to also become CEO of the e-commerce arm again.
Back to retail
Earlier this year, the Chinese technology giant had decided to chop itself into six pieces to become more agile and manageable. Accordingly, in June, the group got a new CEO: Eddie Wu, who until then had been head of retail operations.
However, the e-commerce branch seems to be unable to cope without Wu: in addition to group CEO, Wu is also returning to the position of CEO of the retail divisions Taobao and Tmall Group, with immediate effect. Current e-commerce head Trudy Dai will be given the new task of setting up an asset management division.
Deliberately
As group CEO, Wu is also already in charge of Alibaba’s cloud and AI unit. Thus, the group’s key divisions are once again in the same hands after all. That combination should “ensure total focus on, and significant and sustained investment in, our two core businesses of cloud computing and e-commerce”, chairman Joe Tsai explained to staff, according to MarketWatch.
By those investments, Tsai is explicitly referring to a transformation of the e-commerce business “through technological innovation”. Alibaba is feeling the pressure from young rival Temu, which has already overtaken it as China’s most valuable e-commerce company. Even Alibaba founder Jack Ma told his brainchild to learn more from Temu and adapt.
