Alibaba chief Eddie Wu has strengthened his grip on the sprawling tech conglomerate, reshuffling management once again to take direct charge of its core ecommerce business as it loses market share to rivals PDD Holdings and ByteDance.At the end of a year of restructuring, executive changes and strategy reversals, Wu is now chief executive of Alibaba’s ecommerce unit, as well as chief of its cloud division and group CEO, roles he only assumed in September.
Wu had unexpectedly taken leadership of the cloud business, overturning a succession plan through which departing group chief executive Daniel Zhang was to head up the unit. The Financial Times reported in November that Wu had pushed him out.
On Wednesday, the group announced Wu was replacing longstanding executive Trudy Dai as chief executive of the Taobao and Tmall ecommerce platforms. Together, the platforms provide the country’s largest online shopping services, but they have been steadily losing market share to Temu and Pinduoduo owner PDD Holdings, and ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.