Beijing: Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who helped launch China’s online retailing boom, stepped down as chairman of the world’s biggest e-commerce company Tuesday at a time when its fast-changing industry faces uncertainty amid a US-Chinese tariff war.
Jack Ma, one of China’s wealthiest and best-known entrepreneurs, gave up his post on his 55th birthday as part of a succession announced a year ago. He will stay on as a member of the Alibaba Partnership, a 36-member group with the right to nominate a majority of the company’s board of directors. Jack Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in 1999 to connect Chinese exporters to American retailers.
The company has shifted focus to serving China’s growing consumer market and expanded into online banking, entertainment and cloud computing. Domestic businesses accounted for 66% of its $16.7 billion in revenue in the quarter ending in June.
Chinese retailing faces uncertainty amid a tariff war that has raised the cost of US imports. Growth in online sales decelerated to 17.8 per cent in the first half of 2019 amid slowing Chinese economic growth, down from 2018’s full-year rate of 23.9%.
Alibaba has said its revenue rose 42 per cent over a year earlier in the quarter ending in June to USD 16.7 billion and profit rose 145 per cent to USD 3.1 billion. Still, that was off slightly from 2018’s full-year revenue growth of 51 per cent.
Alibaba was founded at a time when few Chinese were online. As internet use spread, the company expanded into consumer-focused retailing and services. Few Chinese used credit cards, so Alibaba created the ‘Alipay’ online payments system.
AP