Alibaba reveals more details of restructuring plan and familiar faces take many of the top seats

Alibaba Group Holding has gone a step further with its restructuring process by naming some of the people who will helm the individual business units being given more freedom – and it turns out many of them are close to Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma.

The 24-year-old Chinese e-commerce giant, which once dreamed of becoming “the world’s fifth-largest economy”, unveiled a flurry of capital raising and listing plans on Thursday alongside its earnings, including the spin-off of its cloud business in the next 12 months through a “stock dividend distribution to shareholders”, and turning its cloud business into an “independent publicly-listed company”.

Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, also said it will seek external capital for its international e-commerce operation, hold an initial public offering (IPO) for its logistics arm Cainiao in 12 to 18 months, and complete an IPO for Freshippo, its supermarket chain, within the next 6 to 12 months.

Meanwhile, board directors were named for each of the six units being given greater independence, with a number of Alibaba’s founders taking the top seats. Daniel Zhang Yong, group chairman and CEO, will also become chairman and CEO of the cloud unit, and will be flanked by Wang Jian, the founder of Alibaba’s cloud business and who has been lauded by Ma for building up the business from scratch.

Joe Tsai, group executive vice-chairman and one of the two permanent partners in the Alibaba Partnership, will also act as chairman for Cainiao and take a director position at Taobao and Tmall Group, the only unit over which Alibaba will maintain exclusive ownership.

Eddie Wu Yongming, who has been associated with Ma since before Alibaba was officially incorporated in 1999, has been appointed as chairman of Taobao and Tmall Group, and takes director seats on the boards of the local services unit and the international digital commerce group.