Alibaba Removes All Ant Executives from Partnership in First Step to Separation
Alibaba and its financial affiliate Ant Group are gradually completing an organizational restructuring. The original direct internal transfer channel has also been eliminated in favor of the normal separation process, sources familiar with the matter revealed to Chinastarmarket.cn on July 26.
Though formally established in 2014, Ant Group originated from Alipay, which was itself born in 2004. The company is committed to enable inclusive, convenient digital life and financial services for consumers and SMEs.
According to Alibaba’s annual report released on the same day, the e-commerce giant recently revised its Partnership Agreement, which now allows only Alibaba employees to be part of the partnership. Employees of Alibaba‘s affiliates ceased to be partners as of May 31, Alibaba said in the filing. The move was made as part of its continuous efforts to enhance corporate governance.
Alibaba Partners currently have a total of 29 members. Except for some members who announced their retirement, relevant members from the management of Ant Group, including Eric Jing and Ni Xingjun, no longer serve as Alibaba Partners.
Daniel Zhang, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba, said: “These organizational and cultural changes made by Alibaba in the past year will become a new beginning for future development.”
SEE ALSO: Alibaba Pursues Primary Listing on Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Separately on July 26, Alibaba announced that the board of directors had authorized the management of the group to submit an application to HKEx, adding a primary listing in Hong Kong to its New York presence, taking advantage of a rule change allowing high-tech Chinese firms with dual class shares to seek dual primary listings in Hong Kong.
Dual primary listing has become the choice of many Chinese companies. For example, Zhihu, KE Holdings, Tuya Smart, XPeng, Li Auto and others have all achieved dual primary listings in the United States and Hong Kong. Recently, Bilibili also announced that its proposal of a dual primary listing conversion was approved by the annual general meeting of shareholders; Kingsoft Cloud also revealed in March this year that it plans to explore the dual listing of its common shares on the main board of the HKEx.
