Jack Ma urged Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to correct course in a surprise internal memo, in which the billionaire called for fundamental change across the company he co-founded decades ago.
Ma, who has mostly stayed away from day-to-day operations since 2020, stunned employees Wednesday by replying to a staff post on Alibaba’s internal forum. In his brief message, the entrepreneur praised decisions taken in recent years by rival PDD Holdings Inc. to wrest market share from China’s e-commerce leader. But Ma was convinced Alibaba will change and “correct its course,” he said in a post confirmed by people familiar with the forum.
Alibaba, once China’s best candidate to become a trillion-dollar company, is trading near its lowest value this year, at a fraction of its peak in 2020. The company is navigating turmoil both internally and externally, as a weaker-than-anticipated economic recovery and up-and-coming rivals such as PDD and ByteDance Ltd. undermine its once-dominant online retail business.
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