Abandon Ship! Report Claims Groupon’s China Venture Has Lost 9 VPs in the Past Year

It seems that Gaopeng, Groupon’s China joint-venture (of which it now owns only a minority share), may have something of a personnel issue on its hands. Sohu IT is reporting that the company has seen nine VPs leave over the past year alone. The reported list of the departed includes:

• Marketing VP Wen Jingjun
• Sales VP Xie Youlin
• Technology VPs Wang Yongxiang and Yao Liqiang
• Executive VP Zhao Yi
• Financial administrative VP Shi Lei
• Customer service VP Wu Chao
• Regional sales VP Lin Zhongrun
• Tencent QQtuan technology team leader Ivan

(We haven’t been able to independently confirm the names on this list; Sohu IT cites a variety of internal reports it has accessed but which are not available online. We have reached out to Gaopeng for comment on this story; Groupon declined our request for comment.)

Sohu IT also spoke to knowledgable but (as usual) anonymous sources who confirmed the list above and speculated as to the reason for the apparent VP exodus. Supposedly, the source of the trouble is CEO Lin Zhu, who Sohu’s sources say isn’t willing to listen to anyone else’s ideas and shuts out any subordinates to disagree with him.

That certainly seems like the sort of thing that could drive VPs away, but it’s best to keep in mind that these are still just rumors, and the explanation above just reflects the opinions of some anonymous Gaopeng employees, so it may or may not be accurate.

Gaopeng is a relatively minor player in China’s group buy market at this point, holding under 3 percent market share as of Q1 2013.

(Sohu IT via TechWeb)