On December 25, the Alibaba Group announced that the group's four senior managers – Sun Tongyu, President of Taobao.com, a subsidiary of the group, Li Qi, the group's COO, John Wu, the group's CTO and Li Xuhui, the group's Vice President, will leave their current posts by next June. Ostensibly, they will go abroad to study. Alibaba said that the power shift is part of the group's human resources strategy.

Sun Tongyu's departure caused quite a stir. Some people inside the industry thought that since Daniel Zhang, ex-CFO of Shanda Entertainment, had been appointed as the CFO and Vice President of Taobao, Sun's resignation is likely to pave the way for Taobao's ascent.

For more details, please read the full story in Chinese. (http://www.bbtnews.com.cn/mainland/channel/35406.shtml)

(China.org.cn December 26, 2007)