Alibaba Group Announces CFO Succession, Reshuffles E-Commerce Business
Alibaba Group announced today that Toby Xu, its current Deputy Chief Financial Officer, will succeed Maggie Wu as Chief Financial Officer, effective April 1, 2022. Maggie will continue as a partner in the Alibaba Partnership and will also serve as an executive director on the Alibaba board.
“Since joining Alibaba almost fifteen years ago, Maggie has helped lead three successful company public listings as CFO: Alibaba.com on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007, and Alibaba Group Holding on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014 and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2019. She is humble and resilient, and has been my irreplaceable and closest partner over the years,” said Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group. “We will continue to benefit from her guidance and insights in her continued role as an Alibaba board director.”
Toby joined Alibaba in July 2018 and was appointed Deputy Chief Financial Officer in July 2019. Before joining Alibaba Group, Toby was a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 11 years, which he joined in 1996. He serves as a director of Sun Art Retail Group, Lianhua Supermarket Holdings and Red Star Macalline Group. Toby graduated from Fudan University in Shanghai, China with a bachelor’s degree in Physics in 1996. He is a member of the Chinese Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
“Toby took on responsibilities that grew to include our strategic investments, in addition to financial management and operations. We are certain that Toby is the right person to serve as our new Group CFO and, together with the core management team, will help lead our team towards our next success.” said Zhang.
Alibaba also said in an internal letter that it would form two new units to house its main e-commerce businesses – international digital commerce and China digital commerce – in a bid to accelerate growth.
The international digital commerce unit will house Alibaba’s overseas consumer-facing and wholesale businesses, and include AliExpress, Alibaba.com and Lazada. The unit will be headed by Jiang Fan, whose had been president of the Taobao and Tmall marketplaces.
Alibaba will house its domestic commerce businesses in the China digital commerce unit, which is to be led by firm founding member Trudy Dai, the firm indicated.
