According to news from the investment community, on the morning of April 20, the share price of Alibaba-SW (09988.HK) fell nearly 2% in early trading to HK$203.6. As of the close of Hong Kong stocks last Friday, Alibaba’s share price was HK$207.6, and today’s opening price of Alibaba’s share price was HK$205.4. According to the opening price, the value of Alibaba’s Hong Kong stock market fell by HK$47.216 billion.
This past weekend, Ali and Jiang Fan became the focus of the Internet circle. It all started with the Weibo post on April 17 – “Huahua Dong Huahua” publicly named Zhang Dayi, “This is the last warning, I will be welcome to provoke my husband again.” Jiang Fan, president of Tmall, burned the fire to Ali.
This is no simple peach news. It is reported that Tong Wenhong, CPO (Chief Human Resources Officer) of Ali Group, said inside the company that Jiang Fan’s personal family problems were not handled properly, which seriously affected the company’s reputation. He should seriously reflect on it and apologize to everyone. Regarding the relevant rumors, the company will be officially established. The working group investigates.
Jiang Fan is recognized as a young talent in the Internet circle, and has always been regarded by the outside world as the “successor” of Ali’s CEO. Ali’s investigation will mainly focus on whether Taobao and Tmall under Jiang Fan’s rule have transfer of interests with Ruhan Holdings, in response to the rumors of “using power to take care of lovers”.
In the anti-corruption work, Ali has always been ruthless. Iron Maiden Jiang Fang once sent seven executives to prison. This time, Jiang Fan’s originally great career has now had to be marked with a question mark.
Jiang Fan apologizes: ask the company to investigate me
Ali responded quickly: set up a working group to investigate
Unexpectedly, the president of China’s largest Internet company would fall on such a disgraceful thing.
At noon on April 17, a Weibo user named “Huahua Dong Huahua” publicly named Zhang Dayi, saying, “This is the last warning, I’ll be welcome to provoke my husband again,” and let him respect himself. Later, some netizens revealed that the husband of the party involved was suspected to be Jiang Fan, the president of Taobao and Tmall.
Internet celebrity, Ali’s president, and the main room tore up the mistress… This turmoil gathered all kinds of factors that quickly fermented into the focus of public opinion, and also made Jiang Fan’s original “family affairs” an investigation that Ali had to come forward with. Insider anti-corruption incident.
The next afternoon, on April 18, Jiang Fan posted on Ali’s intranet, apologizing to the company and colleagues for the negative impact of the rumors on the Internet, and asking the company to investigate himself.
Since then, Ali has formally intervened in the investigation. Tong Wenhong, CPO (Chief Human Resources Officer) of Ali Group, replied to Jiang Fan’s post on the Ali internal forum. She said: Jiang Fan’s personal family problems have not been handled well, which has seriously affected the company’s reputation. To seriously reflect on it, he should also tell everyone Apologies, for the relevant rumors, the company will formally set up a working group to investigate.
It is reported that Ali’s investigation will mainly focus on whether Taobao and Tmall under Jiang Fan’s rule have transfer of interests with Ruhan Holdings. Once verified, Jiang Fan’s career in Ali’s career promotion may be ruined.
“How big is this? It is directly related to whether there is rumored insider trading and traffic manipulation on Taobao and Tmall, and whether it is fair to large, medium and small merchants who spend a lot of money to buy traffic and advertising space.” In the eyes of netizens, this matter is not only related to Go to Alibaba executives’ work style and ethics, and Alibaba’s corporate culture orientation.
On April 19, an anonymous Alibaba employee broke the news that Alibaba Entertainment will have new adjustments. Jiang Fan, who is at the cusp of the storm, will be transferred from the Taobao department to the president of Alibaba Entertainment.
As we all know, in the various business lines of Ali Group, Ali Entertainment is not outstanding, even relatively marginal. What’s more dramatic is that Yang Weidong, the former president of Alibaba Entertainment, was arrested for economic crimes in 2018, and Yu Yongfu, who had high hopes, also let go of the “mess” of Alibaba Entertainment early.
However, Ali has denied Jiang Fan’s transfer as president of Ali Entertainment, and the results of the investigation have not yet been released.
Ali Tie Niang moves the knife:
Once the bottom line is reached, Ali will never be soft-hearted
Although Ali has never dealt with executives due to personal style issues in history, if Jiang Fan is really involved in the transfer of economic benefits, he will not be merciful according to Ali’s previous practices.
Jiang Fang, who has the title of “Anti-Corruption Queen” in Ali, once sent seven executives to prison. According to the data, Jiang Fang is a student of Jack Ma and graduated from Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Technology. After graduation, Jiang Fang joined Jack Ma’s team and followed Jack Ma to create projects such as the China Yellow Pages. Later, when Jack Ma founded Alibaba, Jiang Fang became one of the “Alibaba 18 Arhats”, and her job number was 13.
Compared with Peng Lei and Tong Wenhong, Jiang Fang lives more behind the scenes, but her thunderous tactics in anti-corruption have earned her the title of Ali’s “Iron Lady”.
In 2009, Alibaba formally established an internal integrity department, led by Jiang Fang, whose responsibilities are corruption investigation, prevention and compliance management. This department is independent of the internal audit and internal control departments of Alibaba’s various business lines. The investigation authority is not capped, and even Jack Ma can investigate.
The biggest personnel earthquake in Ali’s history came from her. From the end of 2010 to the beginning of 2011, when Jiang Fang reported her work in an e-mail, she made a foul language. The reason was that she found that there was collusion between suppliers inside and outside the “China Supply” department, and employees took huge rebates. The results of the investigation were shocking. The whole group attaches great importance to this.
This directly involved Wei Zhe, the head of the Alibaba B2B team and the direct superior of the China Supply Department, who was then the global vice president of Alibaba and the CEO of Alibaba. In the end, Wei Zhe, who was once thought to be Jack Ma’s successor, resigned.
It is also because of this that Jiang Fang found that some executives headed by Yan Limin, the general manager of Juhuasuan, had an outrageous degree of corruption. In the end, she personally fired 21 people and sent 7 people to prison. Among them, Yan Limin was sentenced to 7 years in prison. These people also included the vice president of human resources of Ali, the vice president of movies, the president of Youku, etc.
During his years in Alibaba, Wei Zhe led Alibaba’s B2B company to a new level. Over the years, no one can tell the merits and demerits, but what is certain is that no matter how much you have contributed in the past, once the bottom line is reached, it will be difficult for Ali to tolerate it.
Today, although the Jiang Fan incident is still under investigation and the results are still inconclusive, the online crowd is surging, and the substantial negative impact of this incident on Ali has already appeared.
Jiang Fan and Ali’s “7-year itch”,
Ali lost another prospective successor?
Without this incident, Jiang Fan’s future in the Chinese Internet circle would be limitless.
Jiang Fan is a general introduced under the strong style of Ali’s war investment. His previous career growth path can be summarized as “starting a business – selling the company to Ali – entering Ali”, which is the path that many entrepreneurs want to take.
In 2006, Jiang Fan, who graduated from Fudan University, joined Google China and participated in the research and development of Google maps, search and content advertising. Kai-Fu Lee, the then president of Google China, admired him very much. Later, Kai-Fu Lee founded an innovation workshop and invited 24-year-old Jiang Fan to co-incubate and create a mobile APP data analysis project “Youmeng”.
In 2013, Jiang Fan, who had received two rounds of investment from Innovation Works and Matrix Partners China, felt that the developer population faced by Umeng was not large and the room for growth was too small, so he decided to sell the company to Ali with a transaction amount of 80 million US dollars. In terms of strategic investment, Ali’s consistent style is to advocate absolute right to speak and demand that he be “dominated by one family”, and Jiang Fan has no meaning to stay in Youmeng.
But Xiaoyao’s son Zhang Yong handed over an olive branch and single-handedly promoted him. Jiang Fan’s deeper relationship with Ali began. He initially joined Taobao as the senior director at the time. Later, when Ali announced the establishment of the “Five New Strategy Executive Committee”, Jiang Fan was one of the members of the committee. This is already a great honor.
From his promotion over the years, it is not difficult to see that Jiang Fan is very valued within Ali, and the road to advancement is smooth. At the end of December 2017, Jiang Fan was appointed as the president of Taobao, becoming the youngest executive of Ali’s power center. He had just joined Ali for 4 years at that time. Before him, the presidents of Taobao were four well-established old Alis: Sun Tongyu (the first president of Taobao, who left Ali in 2008), Lu Zhaoxi (the second CEO of Ali Group), Jiang Peng, and Zhang Jianfeng (a former Taobao, President of Tmall and Juhuasuan Trinity).
In March 2019, Jiang Fan became the president of Tmall. He set a small goal for himself: to double the transaction volume (GMV) of the Tmall platform in the next three years. Jiang Fan, who has great ambitions, also said at the later Ali Double Eleven launch conference that there will be 100 million new users participating in Tmall Double 11 in 2019. As a result, he launched the “Building Building” strategy because the activity was too high. Complicated, too many routines, and bad reviews, last year’s Double Eleven became the worst in terms of reputation.
Jiang Fan is currently the president of Taobao, Tmall, and Alimama business groups, the legal representative of Tmall, and the chairman and general manager. In the eyes of the outside world, he was even trained by Ali as the CEO’s successor. At least, Zhang Yong has always had high hopes for him.
In April last year, Wang Xing made a rare comment on Jiang Fan: “In the next few years, it should be exciting to see how two very smart people, Huang Zheng from Pinduoduo and Jiang Fan from Taobao & Tmall, compete. If he can win this battle, he will be a well-deserved successor to Ali’s CEO, if he is interested in doing this job.”
No one expected that Jiang Fan would usher in such a fatal blow. The retired Jack Ma’s latest Weibo was on April 11, and the content was the discussion between Chinese and African doctors about the new crown pneumonia, but from April 17, the comments below this Weibo are all about the Jiang Fan incident . Things intensified, and it was foreseeable that Ali had to take action.
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