Beijing — Jack Ma, who founded e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and helped launch China’s online retailing boom, announced Monday that he will step down as the company’s chairman next September.
In a letter released by Alibaba, Ma said he will be succeeded by CEO Daniel Zhang, an 11-year veteran of the company. Ma handed over the CEO post to Zhang in 2013 as part of what he said was a long-planned succession.
Ma, a former English teacher, founded Alibaba in 1999 in an apartment in the eastern city of Hangzhou to connect Chinese exporters with foreign retailers. It expanded into consumer retailing, becoming the world’s biggest e-commerce company by total value of goods sold, as well as online finance, cloud computing and other services.
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