Alibaba Published List of 27 Partners, Who’re They?

In the evening of June 16, Alibaba handed in an updated prospectus to SEC. In the new version, the list of its partners that concerns is released for the first time. 27 people, including Jack Ma, Joseph Tsai, Lu Zhaoxin and Peng Lei, consist of the partner team of Alibaba.

Differ from the first prospectus, the number of partners on the list has been reduced from 28 to 27. One of the partners completes a mission handover following the partner code.

The 27 partners include 22 from management (two of them hold a concurrent post in micro financial service management of Alibaba), 4 from micro financial service management, and 1 from Cainiao (菜鸟).

Based on the list, we can affirm that Alibaba, which was found in 1999, has managed to establish a whole set of cultural inheritance mechanism in its top management team. It has transited from founder culture to partner culture. In the constitution form of partners, the ratio of age and gender, or in the system of technicians, professional management personnel and strategic decision makers, a core factor of the company’s value system has been realized, which is, highly approve of the company’s culture and willing to do one’s best for the company’s mission and vision.

The list shows that the ratio of founders, administrators who grow up with the company (entered the company before 2004, but are not founders) and professional managers brought in from outside is about 2:2:4.

Among the 18 founders, 7 entered the partner team. They are Jack Ma, Joseph Tsai, Wu Yongming, Peng Lei, Dai Shan, Jin Jianhang and Jiang Fang. The 9 partners who entered the company before 2004 are Jonathan Lu, Jiang Peng, Peng Yijie, Tong Wenhong, Wang Shuai, Wu Minzhi, Zhang Jianfeng, Zhang Yu, and Cheng Li, who has been interning in Alibaba when he was still a Ph.D. student.

Besides, there are 11 partners who entered the company after 2004, they are professionals in different fields, including finance, law and technology.

Some of them have worked for Alibaba for almost 9 years. The names are Fan Zhiming, Hu Xiaoming, Jing Xiandong, Liu Zhengfei, Shao Xiaofeng, Timothy A.STEINERT, Wang Jian, Wu Wei, Yu Siying, Zeng Ming and Zhang Yong.

It’s worth emphasizing that about twenty percent of the partners are technicians. Among 27 partners, 9 are women, which is also rare in large business in China. Also, 21 of them are born in the 1970s.

In its prospectus, Alibaba explains the meaning of partnership: the existence of partnership is to ensure “the partner spirit” and to guarantee “the continuous development of the company’s mission, vision and value system”. Different from the dual share structure, which concentrates the control power of a company to several founders by high voting rights. Its structure is intended to embody the vision of all the partners.

As declared in the prospectus, the partners of Alibaba should meet the requirement in virtue, value system and contribution to the company. Jack Ma and Joseph Tsai are permanent partners, the others would retire from the title when they leave the company. A partner can name partner candidates every year. A new partner should have worked for Alibaba for more than five years, and should have made great contribution to the company. He or she should also be dedicated to the mission and vision of the company.

In addition, the partner system requires the partners to hold a certain percent of the company share in order to keep the interests of partners unanimous to that of the shareholders.

As for the right to nominate directors, the prospectus has mentioned that the partners have the exclusive right to nominate the majority of board. If a director wants to nominate someone, he or she has to gain majority votes in the annual meeting of shareholders. Tung Chee Hwa, the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong, is now an independent director of the company.

Five of the 27 partners consist of the partner committee, including Jack Ma, Joseph Tsai, Lu, Peng and Zeng.

The first prospectus has also illustrated the coming into being of the partner committee: “Every member of the committee serves for 3 years, but could also be re-elected for many times. The election is hold every three years. In the election, the committee would first nominate 8 partners, then all the partners would vote. 5 out of 8 who get the most votes enter the committee. ”

In spite of this, Alibaba has also illustrated the director nomination right, remuneration and bonus pool, retirement and layoff of the partners in its prospectus.