Wealth Club

With his appointment as chairman of Alibaba, Daniel Zhang is once again being tasked with filling the shoes of the tech company’s showman-founder Jack Ma.

Mr Zhang, 46, has been chief executive of the company valued at about $420bn for the past three years, earning a reputation as a safe pair of hands. Joe Tsai, executive vice-chairman of the company, says he is “capable . . . very creative and has big vision”.

An alumnus of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, he was set to join Barings only for the venerable British bank to then implode on the back of rogue trader Nick Leeson’s colossal losses.

Another luckless choice was Arthur Andersen, a career — and company — that died when the Enron scandal erupted.

Mr Zhang joined PwC instead, and later gained experience working at Shanda, the online gaming company which was acquired last year by Zhejiang Century Huatong Group.

He joined Alibaba in 2007 as chief financial officer of Taobao Marketplace, its online ecommerce platform, and has gradually risen up the ranks.

Mr Zhang is perhaps best known for his stewardship of Singles Day, an Alibaba innovation that transformed November 11 into the biggest shopping bonanza on the planet.

Last year, shoppers spent more than $25bn across Alibaba platforms on the day while Mr Zhang raced around logistics units and other parts of the Singles Day machine, cheering on workers and ensuring the 24 hours ran smoothly.

More recently, he is credited with driving the partnership with Starbucks to deliver coffee, dealing a blow to rival Tencent.

Mr Zhang will have another year to adust to learn the ropes from Mr Ma, but takes up the double-headed role at a difficult time.

Margins are being pummelled by the group’s pivot to “new retail”, with company spending heavily in bricks and mortar operations that require more capital expenditure and longer lead times than purely online efforts.

Intense competition with rival Tencent, in everything from payments to food delivery to ecommerce, is also pushing up operating costs, as the companies have to shell out subsidies to woo consumers and merchants to their platforms.

The trade dispute between China and the US, meanwhile, is roiling markets, threatening to dent the Alibaba model of connecting, say, cherry farmers in Washington state with diners in Beijing.

Mr Zhang has, however, stepped into Mr Ma’s shoes before. At Alibaba’s anniversary party last year the pair both dressed up as singer Michael Jackson but it was only Mr Ma’s pelvic thrusts that made it on to video.

It remains to be seen how smoothly the two will choreograph the transition from flamboyant showman to a rather more reluctant entertainer.