Alibaba CEO Zhang Yong Resigns as Weibo Director

Leading Chinese microblogging platform Weibo announced on Monday that Chris Tung, CMO of Alibaba Group, has been appointed as a member of the company’s board of directors, and Zhang Yong, CEO of Alibaba, has resigned from the position of company director with immediate effect.

In 2013, Alibaba reached strategic cooperation with Weibo and acquired 18% of its shares. In May 2014, Zhang Yong was appointed as a director of Weibo.

His successor, Chris Tung, joined Alibaba as the Chief Marketing Officer in January 2016. He also served as the president of Alimama from November 2017 to November 2018. In addition, Chris Tung is currently a director of Ruhnn Holding Limited, a company listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange.

At present, Alibaba is Weibo’s largest external institutional shareholder, maintaining 29.6% of its shares, and is also Weibo’s largest customer. Advertising revenue of Weibo from Alibaba totaled 117 million yuan, 98 million yuan and 188 million yuan, respectively, from 2018 to 2020, and reached 110 million yuan in the first half of 2021.

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In addition to quitting the board of directors of Weibo, on December 30, 2021, Zhang Yong also resigned as director of Didi. Zhang Yi, the senior legal director of Alibaba and general counsel for Alibaba‘s local life services branch, was appointed as a director of Didi.