Exciting news for Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.! Co-founder and Chief Executive Eddie Wu is stepping up to lead the Chinese internet giant’s core e-commerce group.
Effective immediately, Wu will become CEO of Taobao and Tmall Group, Alibaba’s domestic e-commerce unit. This announcement was made in a statement Tuesday night.
In his new role, Wu will be taking over from Trudy Dai, the previous CEO of Taobao and Tmall, who will transition to a new internal role to help establish an asset-management company.
Wu, who took over as CEO of Alibaba Group in September, is also in charge of Alibaba’s cloud and AI unit.
According to Alibaba Group’s Chairman Joe Tsai, “Eddie’s leadership of both Alibaba Cloud and TTG will ensure total focus on, and significant and sustained investment in, our two core businesses of cloud computing and e-commerce, as well as enabling TTG to transform through technology innovation.”
While Alibaba has faced some challenges recently, including being surpassed by Pinduoduo and Temu parent company PDD as China’s most valuable e-commerce company, the company has announced a major overhaul earlier this year, reorganizing into six business units in a move “designed to unlock shareholder value.”
Alibaba’s U.S.-traded shares are down about 14% year to date, compared to the S&P 500’s 24% gain this year.
