JD.com Announces New Leadership Shakeup following Alibaba

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BEIJING, June 26 (TiPost)— China’s e-commerce giant JD.com announced another leadership shakeup as news about its reorganization emerged.

Image Source: Visual China

JD.com will establish a new business division called Innovative Retail to explore offline retail operation and innovative retail models, the insider of the e-commerce retailer confirmed to the state-run newspaper Shanghai Securities News on Monday. The division, merging 7Fresh, a fresh food chain supermarket, with other JD units including its community group buying platform Pinpin, will be led by Yan Xiaobing, the former head of JD’s international division, who will directly report to JD CEO Xu Ran, the newspaper reported.

One of JD’s arms earlier that day surprisingly announced its management reshuffle. Yu Rui, has resigned as CEO, executive director, and the authorized representative of JD Logistics (JDL) for personal health reasons, effective from June 26, and the company appointed Hu Wei as his successor, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) on Monday.

With rich experience in operation and management in logistic industry, Yu joined in JDL in January 2010 and served as CEO since 2021. Hu was the former CEO of Jingdong Property Inc., an infrastructure asset management and integrated service platform established in just eleven years ago. In late March, JD proposed to spin off the unit and applied for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Main Board of HKEX. It is rare to see change of the key executive as Jingdong Property is in a critical period of development. JDL was reported to anticipate Yu, who was not in good health recently, to recover as soon as possible, when he will come back depends on his recovery.

JD’s move came days after its domestic peer Alibaba Group appointed two veterans as new leaders. The Executive Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai was appointed as the Chairman to succeed Daniel Zhang, or Zhang Yong, and Eddie Yongming Wu, the Chairman of Taobao and Tmall, will be the new CEO to take Zhang’s role, according to a statement last Tuesday. Zhang will continue to lead Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group as the division’s Chairman and CEO. Zhang said it is the right time to make a transition as Alibaba Cloud plays a key role in progressing forward a full spin-off, which was approved by the board of directors last month. Alibaba aims to complete the breakup in the next 12 months and make the cloud unit an independent publicly listed firm.

This is JD’s second management reshuffle in more than one month. JD said in May that Xu Lei would retire in June from positions as CEO and executive director due to personal reasons, succeeded by Xu Ran, or Sandy Ran Xu, the current CFO. Xu Ran has been appointed as an executive director to take Xu Lei’s role and to become the first female to hold the position. JDL’s CFO Ian Su Shan has been appointed as CFO of its parent JD.com.

Working at JD for over a decade, Xu Lei worked as CEO for just a year as he was promoted in April, 2022. Wall Street analysts believed the management change suggested JD to shift its focus to profitability. Calling the change surprising, Citi expected JD could focus on a more disciplined balance between growth and profit.

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