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Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

nytimes.com

111–120 of 134 posts

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#111

> An Alibaba spokesman said Ma remains the company’s executive chairman and will provide transition plans over a significant period of time, contrary to a New York Times article that said he was “stepping down” to “retire.” The Times story was taken out of context, and factually wrong, the spokesman said. https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2163376/jack...

Does it surprise you that The NY Times took something out of context and provided factually false info?

Yes, it does.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#112

> An Alibaba spokesman said Ma remains the company’s executive chairman and will provide transition plans over a significant period of time, contrary to a New York Times article that said he was “stepping down” to “retire.” The Times story was taken out of context, and factually wrong, the spokesman said. https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2163376/jack...

Does it surprise you that The NY Times took something out of context and provided factually false info?

Nope, definitely not surprised.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#114

> An Alibaba spokesman said Ma remains the company’s executive chairman and will provide transition plans over a significant period of time, contrary to a New York Times article that said he was “stepping down” to “retire.” The Times story was taken out of context, and factually wrong, the spokesman said. https://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/2163376/jack...

Does it surprise you that The NY Times took something out of context and provided factually false info?

It's their bread and butter. Sticking to the truth is tedious and gets fewer clicks than tabloid-style soap opera, so why bother?

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#115
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's a straight donation maybe it's PRless. The number of people like Trump's or Zuckerberg's who donate to family foundations that give them tax breaks and give them a way to funnel money to their family through jobs that are paid by the foundations, has seriously degraded trust in the concept of charities as organizations. It's like running a company nowadays and wondering why your employees have no loyalty. Yea…

Showing loyalty for the sake of loyalty as a worker has nothing to do with honor. It's... stupid. I do not expect my employees to show loyalty to me because they should. I expect them to remain employed with me because it is their best option, and I compete for their labor business with the other employers in the pool.

Which is an appropriate belief based on reality. The same way that assuming someone rich donating to charity has ulterior motives, because rich people donating to charity have demonstrated repeatedly that they have ulterior motives

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#116
Jack Ma will be able to get more stuff done not being burdened by the Alibaba leader position. I guess it's just politics for his hands not to be tied and he could make bigger changes in China.

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#117
post #97

"When you are 50 to 60 years old, spend time training and developing young people, the next generation," Ma added. "When you are over 60 years old, you better stay with your grandchildren." https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/30/jack-ma-dont-fear-making-mis...

"I was offered retirement, or a choice between me not getting old to see my grandkids growing up or my grandkids never to see me as I will be getting old." -- for those geeks that can't translate it to the language of power; pick one of those choices depending on how much faith you have in those in power. Do you truly think Ma is not considering Alibaba his dearest child?

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal for foreigners to own a Chinese company. A shell company based in the Caribbean is publicly traded. It owns no assets. https://www.barrons.com/articles/beware-the-pitfalls-of-the-...

It is not illegal for foreigners to own part of Chinese companies. It's generally illegal for a single foreign entity to own a controlling interest. Softbank and Yahoo invested into Alibaba relatively early on. It was incorporated in China. Their positions represented the majority of shares in the business, just not individually.

There are severe restrictions on WFOEs. For all practical purposes they're useless for running a domestic tech business.

Really recommend this write up on VIEs and Alibaba: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/conferences/2017-imo/Documents/M...

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#119
post #79
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't ask this flippantly. Is it possible that he simply wasn't as good as he thought he was? In situations like this, I often find the company culture can suck, but I also often find that people overrate themselves and aren't willing to develop. I'd say my observations are about half-half.

Given what a business Aliexpress became under his watch, nobody will challenge his contribution

Exactly- success hides failure. That’s why it’s an interesting question. So what’s the answer?

Re: Jack Ma to Retire from Alibaba

#120
post #119
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what a business Aliexpress became under his watch, nobody will challenge his contribution

Exactly- success hides failure. That’s why it’s an interesting question. So what’s the answer?

You can compare the global direction he overlooked, vs. USA strategic direction staffed with trophy execs and given enormous marketing budget (which was measured close to $100m and possibly more in recent years,) vs. one he had, which was zero.

Aliexpress was created with explicit intention of barging into US market, yet it ended up with them making more money in Russia than in every other market combined.

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