Alibaba has announced that seven executives from its affiliate firm Ant Group – including chairman Eric Jing Xiandong and CTO Xingjun Ni – have “resigned from its partnership structure,” South China Morning Post reported.
Partners in Alibaba can propose members to the company’s board of directors.
The resignations are in line with Alibaba’s amended rules that only its own staff be made partners. The company described the change, which came into effect in May this year, as an effort to “enhance corporate governance.”
Alibaba, however, still retains a 33% stake in Ant, which was launched as a payments and financial services spin-off in 2011.
The structural changes come in response to an ongoing regulatory crackdown in Beijing, which halted Ant’s ambitious US$37 billion IPO plans in 2020. Since the crackdown, Ant and Alibaba have been making efforts to keep their operations separate.
Alibaba recently announced applying for a primary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange while keeping its US listing. The process is expected to conclude by the end of 2022.
See also: Alibaba’s financial health in 5 charts
Editing by Miguel Cordon and Joy Tirkey
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