Alibaba Opens Down After Founder Jack Ma Announces Retirement Plan

Shares of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. opened down 2.3% on Monday after founder and Chairman Jack Ma announced he will retire in a year to make way for a new generation of leaders. 

Alibaba’s New York-listed shares opened at $158.59, compared with its last closing price of $162.37 before Ma’s succession plan was announced on Monday in China. Current CEO Daniel Zhang will take over as chairman on Sept. 10, 2019, which is also Ma’s 55th birthday and comes in the year of Alibaba’s own 20th anniversary. 

Ma will continue to stay on as a member of Alibaba’s board until its annual general meeting in 2020.

Alibaba’s stock has lost more than a fifth of its value since a peak in early June, paralleling a similar correction for many Chinese internet companies whose stocks posted big gains in 2017 on bullishness about the Chinese internet.

Ma founded Alibaba in an apartment in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou in 1999, making it one of China’s oldest internet companies still in operation. The company is currently China’s largest internet firm with a market value of about $420 billion. 

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Contact reporter Yang Ge (geyang@caixin.com)