Yearly section.
Wen 丨 Gao Honghao Guan Yiwen Wan Pei Gong Fangyi He Qianming
Edited by 丨Guan Yiwen
In the past year, both mature companies that have been listed and companies that want to accelerate their development through listing have encountered more severe challenges. Delisting, layoffs, organizational adjustments, shrinking business fronts, upgrading strategies, etc. are all means of coping.
The era of China's Internet companies has passed, and how companies manage and design organizations under pressure has become more important, so "LatePost" will launch the "Most Powerful People in Large Companies" series in the second half of 2021, hoping to start by combing the organizational structure of these companies and understanding how companies with a market value of tens of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, and infiltrating the lives of hundreds of millions of people will operate and manage.
In 2021, in the face of multiple pressures of growth peaking, supervision and competition: Alibaba upgraded its own organizational strategy; Tencent rarely concentrated on multiple vice president-level managers; ByteDance's first large-scale contraction of business; Meituan upgraded its strategy to "retail + technology"; Didi encountered security review after listing, and its market share fell from 90% to 70%; Ant IPO was stopped and continued to rectify; Xiaomi tried to open up its second growth curve; JD.com returned to the right track; Pinduoduo's growth peaked. Began to reduce market launch; Kuaishou bid farewell to the dual-core era; NetEase, which has a stable business, has frequent poaching of game business executives; Baidu has intensively recruited talents from the outside.
"LatePost" takes stock of the flow of core executives of these companies in 2021, and the core management as the decision-making center of a company, their changes to a certain extent also affect the future direction of the enterprise.
Alibaba: "1 + 4" new structure
2021 is the most challenging year for Ali (NYSE: BABA), as well as the year with the most personnel changes and the most thorough personnel changes.
This year, Ali's market value evaporated by about $400 billion, and as of press time, the stock price fell by about 50% to $129.8 per share; a fine of 18.228 billion yuan was paid for monopolistic behavior; the "807" incident and a president was damaged; a rather low-key Double Eleven e-commerce shopping festival was held; the super head anchor Via on the platform was fined and suspended; and in the latest quarter, management also rarely lowered its revenue expectations for the financial year.
In the last month of 2021, Alibaba ushered in the biggest personnel adjustment since its listing, and Daniel Zhang, chairman of the board of directors and CEO, added four presidents in charge for himself, namely Dai Shan, who is responsible for China's digital business sector, Jiang Fan, who is responsible for overseas digital commerce, Zhang Jianfeng, who is responsible for cloud and technology, and Yu Yongfu, who is responsible for the life service sector.
Last year, Ali began to divide a number of related businesses into a section, and the four presidents in charge can understand the commanders of each sector, between the CEO and the president of the business group, which Ali calls "diversified governance", focusing on the independent and autonomous management of each section.
Dai Shan, Jiang Fan, and Yu Yongfu all had further expanded their powers and responsibilities.
In addition to the previous B series, Dai Shan also began to be responsible for Ali's most core and most challenged e-commerce business, she just recently integrated Taobao and Tmall, no longer distinguishing between individual merchants and brand merchants, diluting growth and emphasizing user experience, which is to some extent a farewell to Ali's e-commerce development ideas in the past decade.
Jiang Fan went from the president of Taobao (Taobao, Tmall, Alimama) to the entire overseas digital business sector, including the C-end (Lazada, Trendyol, AliExpress, etc.) and B-end (international station, etc.) business, Ali for the first time handed over the overseas market as a business as a whole to one person, and the structure was juxtaposed with the Chinese digital business sector that Dai Shan was responsible for. For Jiang Fan, the development space has become larger and the challenges have become greater.
In July last year, Alibaba handed over to Yu Yongfu the integration of the three businesses based on LBS map (Gaode), wine travel (flying pig), and local life. Before his promotion, Yu Yongfu was in a corner of the world, focusing on the business development of AutoNavi and doing things in a low-key manner in the past two years. After taking charge of the entire Alibaba life service sector, he put a lot of energy into the local life business, and in the first internal letter he sent, he shared in detail his thoughts, organizational issues and incentive policies on the local life business, and the employees were very encouraged.
In 2021, there will be at least more than 15 changes at the level of vice president (M6) of Ali Group, and many executives will leave Ali to start a business, and the establishment of two hydrogen and one oxygen by the former DINGTalk CEO Chen Hang is a typical example.
Alibaba is actively changing itself to cope with complex challenges, such as Ali, which has always focused on performance growth, first proposed to reinvest all new profits in the first natural quarter of 2021, and increase investment in potential businesses like a startup; Alibaba also shifted from a super app in the past to launch multiple apps to meet the needs of users.
A new commander, a new business strategy, may bring a new Ali. (Guan Yiwen)
Tencent bid farewell to the days of "lying and winning", and so did its vice presidents
Unlike Alibaba, which is accustomed to making frequent organizational adjustments, Tencent (SEHK:00700) tends to make large-scale organizational adjustments only when there are major changes in the external environment. 2021 is one such year:
Tencent was asked to give up exclusive music rights; the leading Douyu and Huya merger cases were rejected; for the first time in 8 years, WeChat external jump links were opened; the release of game numbers was suspended, and the protection of minors became increasingly strict; it almost emptied its shareholding in JD.com, which was once its most important foreign investment; and as its market value continued to decline, Tencent also fell out of the list of the world's top ten Internet companies.
In the past, Tencent relied on WeChat, investment ecology and the massive copyrights in its hands to come out on top in many fields, but now the days of "lying and winning" are gone. Ma Huateng, chairman of Tencent's board of directors and CEO, and Martin Lau, president of tencent, said at the employee meeting at the end of 2021 that the company should reduce costs and increase efficiency and "survive the winter". As of press time, Tencent's share price is 453 Hong Kong dollars per share, and its market value is 4.35 trillion Hong Kong dollars (about 558.5 billion US dollars), ranking eleventh in the world.
In order to cope with the challenges brought about by the above changes, Tencent has made adjustments for a whole year, focusing on a rare number of vice president-level managers:
The Platform and Content Business Group (PCG) has successively replaced the number one position of most of its services. This stems in large part from PCG's future strategic exploration: the interaction of the virtual world with the real society. The new direction requires a manager whose competency model is more compatible to lead. Tencent COO Ren Yuxin said at the staff meeting that he would give PCG more time.
In this adjustment, Yao Xiaoguang, vice president of Tencent and president of Tianmei Studio Group, concurrently served as the head of the PCG social platform business of QQ across the business group, which is rare in Tencent's consistent appointments. His extensive experience in the gaming industry helps to lead QQ's exploration of virtual and real-world interactions.
The new head of information platform and service line, Xi Xiaohu, has a deep technical background, and he has worked at Google and Didi, and he is considered to be one of the three engineers that domestic Internet companies most want to poach from Google. After Tencent's acquisition of Sogou, it will start to invest in the search field, and products such as QQ Browser will also strengthen the technical capabilities including recommendation algorithm recommendation in the future, which are in line with The ability model of Xiaohu.
The Cloud & Smart Industry Business Cluster (CSIG) continues to grow in importance and a regional business unit has been established with the aim of establishing more regional sinking channels to reach small and medium-sized enterprises. "LatePost" learned that Li Qiang, former senior global vice president of SAP and general manager of China, has joined CSIG to take charge of the smart industry and service business; Zhang Zhidong, CEO of Green Orange, has joined CSIG as the head of Tencent Maps.
The Interactive Entertainment Business Group (IEG) began its internationalization process at a time when the growth of the domestic game market peaked. Among them, the distribution department has set up a new international brand Level Infinite, and the two major studio groups of Tianmei and Photon have laid out self-developed studios in many overseas places.
Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Yuwen Group have made business adjustments respectively, the core of which is to get rid of the absolute dependence on copyright since its inception, and will further deepen into the upstream of the industrial chain of music, literature and film and television in the future.
Liang Zhu, the former head of QQ, became the new CEO of Tencent Music in 2021, and his transfer is also at the node when Tencent Music is required by the regulator to give up exclusive copyright. A Tencent music source said that the group is strengthening the control of the music business, all content business needs to carry out deeper coordination to form a real sense of the "group army", from this point of view, QQ Music and Tencent PCG have rich management experience of Liang Zhu is the right person.
Tencent is currently China's most valuable internet company, with WeChat having more than 1 billion active users in the country, meaning it faces more challenges as it strikes a balance between regulation, social responsibility and business.
A Tencent zhonggan told LatePost that in the past, the growth rate between Internet companies was compared, and the future comparison is who is more stable. In April 2021, Tencent established the Sustainable Social Value Division (SSV) and pledged to invest 100 billion yuan to practice common prosperity.
"LatePost" learned that at the staff meeting at the end of last year, Ma Huateng expressed his thoughts on a series of changes that occurred in 2021, saying that Tencent is just an ordinary company during the great development of the national society, a beneficiary under the wave of national development, not a basic service, which can be replaced at any time. In the future, when Tencent serves the country and society, it will be able to do not lack, do a good job, do not overstep, do a good job as an assistant, and do a good job as a connector. (Gao Honghao)
Meituan: Transitional management plan under the new strategy
In 2021, Meituan (SEHK:03690) became the second Internet company to accept antitrust penalties after Alibaba. China's State Administration for Market Regulation announced a fine of 3.44 billion yuan and asked it to improve platform governance within three years in accordance with the Administrative Guidance Issued by the State Administration.
This makes the US group, which is good at making the scale bigger, have no room to show its advantages. A new environment requires a new strategy and a new organization. In order to embrace change, Meituan upgraded its strategy from "Food + Platform" to "retail + technology". As of press time, Meituan's share price is 206 Hong Kong dollars per share, and the market value is 1.27 trillion Hong Kong dollars (about 162.6 billion US dollars).
Meituan's organizational structure has also been greatly adjusted. Meituan unified three important retail businesses - preferential selection, fast donkey and grocery shopping business under the responsibility of Chen Liang, senior vice president of Meituan.
Guo Wanhuai, vice president of Meituan and former general manager of the fast donkey business department, was transferred to the preferred business, and the person in charge of the fast donkey became Gao Yulong, the former head of the fast donkey commodity department.
Meituan also set up a special retail group g-team to be responsible for discussions and resolutions on retail-related businesses. There are five members of the group, all of whom are the core executives of Meituan, namely: Wang Xing, founder and CEO of Meituan, Wang Puzhong, senior vice president and president of The Home Business Group, Chen Liang, Guo Wanhuai, and Li Shubin, vice president and general manager of Meituan platform. This group can be compared to Ali's class committee system, more like a transitional management plan.
In the retail business, Meituan has formed a path of multi-business exploration with community group buying business as the core, such as grocery shopping, fast donkey, flash purchase, and group good goods. According to Meituan's 2021 financial report, Meituan's preferred business is still in the investment period, with a cumulative loss of 23.2 billion yuan in 9 months.
The takeaway, in-store and wine and guest business continued to grow steadily, with revenue from the food delivery business increasing 28% year-on-year to $25.6 billion in the third quarter of 2021 and the in-store and wine business increasing by 3.1% year-on-year to $8.6 billion.
After the retirement of Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen, another core executive of Meituan left, and Guo Qing, a member of the highest decision-making body S-team and general manager of the cycling business department, left his job and went to a robot startup as CEO.
The core forces have left, and there is no successor to fill the position, and the founders and core executives of the US group need to be responsible for more affairs. Wang Xing directly took over the four businesses that Wang Huiwen was previously responsible for, including the Meituan platform, smart transportation, basic platform and review business; in 2021, Meituan split the smart transportation platform that was established less than a year ago, and the two major business units under the platform, taxi and unmanned car distribution, were independent, respectively, by Zhang Xingyuan, the former head of operation of the taxi business department, and Xia Huaxia, the former general manager of the intelligent transportation platform, both of whom reported to Wang Xing; Zhang Chuan, senior vice president of the Meituan and president of the store business group, needed to be responsible for the cycling business department after Guo Qing left.
"LatePost" learned that in 2021, the head of the charging treasure business department also reported to Zhang Chuan, and this part of the business was originally on the Meituan platform.
Today, Meituan's power is concentrated in the hands of Wang Xing and seven core executives - co-founder and senior vice president Mu Rongjun, senior vice president and CFO Chen Shaohui, Wang Puzhong, Chen Liang, Zhang Chuan, Guo Wanhuai, Li Shubin. These eight people are also members of the S-team, meituan's top management decision-making body. (Wan Pei)
ByteDance: Liang Rubo takes power and Zhang Nan expands power
At the time of the worst earnings season in the history of many Internet companies, ByteDance maintained a relatively good development trend. LatePost learned that although the growth of ByteDance's advertising business has slowed down, it has internally claimed that its revenue has surpassed Alibaba's ranking first in the country and third in the world. This is mainly due to the steady position of Douyin in China and the rapid expansion of TikTok in the world.
However, due to the large environment, the world's highest valuation (more than $300 billion) of unlisted Internet companies has slowed down in 2021.
The current challenges facing ByteDance are clear: the growth of Douyin has fallen into a bottleneck, the international political situation has not completely shaken TikTok out of the crisis; it has not yet found a new growth point, and the listing is still not in time; the rapid expansion of personnel and business expansion in the past few years has brought a burden to the company's development.
In order to cope with multiple challenges, ByteDance has been adjusted from personnel to organizational structure.
Founder Yiming Zhang announced his retirement as global CEO of the company in May 2021. He describes himself as not a "mature manager," and his busy CEO job keeps him from thinking about endless and little-discussed ideas or learning about the latest technological advances. After retiring, he will "create more possibilities for the company for a ten-year period."
His successor, to the surprise of many, is not the number two recognized person within the company, but Liang Rubo, an old classmate who has followed him for more than ten years and has been doing technology for a long time. In contrast, Zhang Lidong, chairman of ByteDance China, and Zhang Nan, CEO of China, have been in charge of more practical businesses, the former responsible for commercialization and functional business, and the latter responsible for core products such as Douyin and Today's Headlines.
TikTok also welcomed a new person in charge. Zhou Shouzi, a former xiaomi partner and president of the international department, joined ByteDance in March 2021 as CFO and CEO of TikTok, and his arrival was once considered to be preparing for the company's listing. However, eight months later, Zhou stepped down as CFO and only served as CEO of TikTok, which was commented that this meant that ByteDance would continue to delay its listing plans.
In terms of business, ByteDance advocates "fattening and thinning", education, securities, games, music, commercialization and other businesses have been contracted to varying degrees, and the optimization of employees has been further increased; the 9-year system of large and small weeks has also been cancelled in this year.
In November 2021, ByteDance organized and sorted out its business, announcing the establishment of six business segments: Douyin, Vigorous Education, Feishu, Volcano Engine, Asahi Lightyear, and TikTok.
The organizational changes described above did not result in substantial operational changes or changes in the reporting relationship between most of the business leaders. The adjusted byte determines the BU-style organizational structure, giving each business greater autonomy and flexibility, while also clarifying the boundary contraction of each BU (business segment), fading the disorder inevitably brought about by the great expansion of the past nine years.
In this context, ByteDance China CEO Zhang Nan has been granted greater authority.
"LatePost" learned that byteDance's commercialization strategy and business strategy merged, and the person in charge, Zhu Shiyu, reported from reporting to Zhang Lidong to Reporting to Zhang Nan; Zhou Sheng, the head of commercial products, began to report to Zhang Nan on the dotted line at the same time as reporting to Zhang Lidong.
At present, although the head of byteDance's commercialization is still Zhang Lidong (the business of Feishu, Volcano Engine, games, education and other businesses reports separately to the heads of their respective departments), in the foreseeable future, Zhang Nan will be seen more in the commercialization affairs of Douyin BU. (Gao Honghao)
JD.com: Back on track, from people to business
Chinese stocks fell sharply in 2021, with Alibaba and Pinduoduo both falling by more than half, while JD.com (NASDAQ: JD), which also does e-commerce business, fell much smaller — even though its majority shareholder, Tencent, had just reduced its stake in NEARLY 15 percent of JD.com worth $16.4 billion in the name of a special dividend — the decline remained around 20 percent.
This is due to JD.com's corporate positioning, strategy, business model and main consumer groups that are different from e-commerce platforms.
At the company's 2021 second quarter report conference call, Xu Lei, then CEO of JD Retail, said at the time that JD.com was a "new type of entity enterprise" with both physical enterprise attributes and digital technology capabilities. JD.com began to emphasize itself as a "supply chain-based" technology and services company two years ago, and the main consumer group is characterized by urbanization, household consumption, certainty and planning, so it is less affected by the macroeconomy.
Jd.com's senior management team has many adjustments in 2021.
On the same day in early September of that year, Xu Lei, the former retail CEO, was promoted to president of JD.com Group, helping Liu Qiangdong, chairman of the board of directors, achieve daily operations and coordinated development of various business segments. His original position was taken over by the former health CEO Xin Lijun, and Jin Enlin, a subordinate of Xin Lijun and the head of JD Health Pharmaceutical Department, took over his position. A month ago, Feng Yi, president of the omni-channel business group of Jingdong Retail Supermarket, was transferred to the fashion home business group, and Liu Lizhen, former president of the consumer goods division, took over her position.
From the time point at that time, in less than a year, the four most important businesses of JD.com - retail, logistics, technology, and health - the four CEOs of these four sub-groups have all been adjusted. According to the description of many JD.com employees, founder Liu Qiangdong is "more and more decentralized" in the management of the company.
In recent years, Liu Qiangdong has gradually withdrawn from specific businesses and replaced it with JD.com's collective decision-making mechanism. The Strategy Executive Committee (SEC) is the highest executive body for the company's strategic management, composed of heads of various business segments and functional departments of JD.com, and its core work includes strategic planning, supervision and guarantee of the effective implementation of the group's strategic business and projects.
There are not a few executives who have left JD.com. According to the incomplete statistics of "LatePost", at least 6 senior executives of Jingdong will leave or retire in 2021, involving finance, logistics, technology and other businesses, most of which are Jingdong's "veterans" and concentrated in JD.com's non-main business.
In July 2021, Liao Jianwen, chief strategy officer, retired due to illness, and two months later, Xu Ling, who was the vice president of JD Technology Group (formerly JD Digital), Xiao Jun, president of JD Logistics X Business Unit, and Zhou Bowen, chairman of JD Group Technical Committee, left their posts one after another, and Yan Xiaobing, head of JD International, submitted a retirement application in the last month of the year. In addition, "LatePost" learned that Chen Shengqiang, the former CEO of JD Technology and the chief of staff of JD Group, has also left JD.com.
However, the performance of JD.com's main business (self-operated, platform and marketing services) remained stable, accounting for more than 90% of revenue, maintaining a revenue growth rate of 22% in the third quarter. JD.com has also benefited from the implementation of antitrust regulation, and according to JD.com, brands that have been lost due to the "two alternatives" are returning to the JD platform.
As of press time, JD.com's share price is $68.24 per share, more than three times the lowest point in 2018, and its market value is more than $100 billion. The giant ship, which sank for a while 3 years ago, is now back on track and showing more resilience than other companies. (Guan Yiwen)
The turbulent Didi only left two executives
Didi (NYSE: DIDI), which went public in the United States on the last day of June 2021, encountered information security review by Chinese regulators two days after its listing, with a number of its apps removed and several ministries and commissions entering the company for review.
Didi had to stop to deal with regulatory compliance. According to "LatePost", after the review began, Didi internally issued 6 compliance-related system regulations in a week, including the outgoing audit system and the update of the team building fund management method. Didi also established a new data and security committee in August, with CEO Cheng Wei as the director and CTO Zhang Bo as the executive deputy director, which has a number of committees such as data security, network and information security, and algorithm security.
Didi has five executives leaving in 2020, which is a relatively large number of didi executives leaving. By 2021, there will be only two executives who will leave Didi – Zhang Wensong, the former head of the basic platform, and Zhang Zhidong, CEO of Qingorange.
A person familiar with Didi said that for the current Didi, no change does not mean that there is no need for change, but a sign that the crisis has not yet passed.
According to "LatePost", Didi will have new personnel changes in the future.
Judging from the personnel changes in Didi in the past two years, the overall idea has changed from external recruitment of talents to internal promotion. After chen Xi, the former executive president of the online ride-hailing platform company, left his post, Sun Shu, general manager of Huaxiao Pig, took over the position of CEO of the online ride-hailing car; after Zhang Wensong left his post, Didi transferred the Didi Cloud in his hands to the enterprise service business group together with the original enterprise-level business department and the performance platform department, which was responsible for Cai Xiaoou; the basic platform department, the intelligent middle platform department, and the vehicle business department were merged into the intelligent platform business group, with Yang Yi as the person in charge; and the green orange business was transferred to the hands of Wang Wenqing, the former deputy general manager. These people are a new generation of managers who have grown up from within Didi.
Didi's management will face no small challenge. Since 2021, the Orange Heart Preferred business has shrunk in a large area, and tested the waters of new models to pursue profitability; the online car owner industry has been affected by safety reviews and cannot pull new ones, and the focus has shifted to the retention of drivers and users; and new businesses such as freight and car services have not made great progress.
At present, the results of the review investigation have not been announced, and the severity of the penalty is unknown. Competitors are trying to seize the opportunity to compete for Didi's ride-hailing business, which was previously difficult to challenge. According to "LatePost", in the six months since it was removed, Didi's market share has dropped from 90% to 70%. The Didi App is still not online.
In early December 2021, Didi announced its intention to delist from the New York Stock Exchange and start preparations for listing in Hong Kong. Employee option exchanges are affected. On December 24, Didi sent an internal email to postpone the option lifting time, from the original listing half year to the time to be re-determined by the company. Restrictions are for active employees and employees who have been absent for less than 180 days.
Didi's listing is like opening the "Pandora's box" and sending the company into a new fog. As of press time, Didi's stock price is $4.5 per share, and its market value is only $21.7 billion, which is two-thirds from the highest point of listing. (Wan Pei)
Pinduoduo: Say goodbye to some of your own
There are many companies that burn the share of money, and few have such remarkable results as Pinduoduo (NASDAQ:PDD).
From 2016 onwards, by 2020, it surpassed Alibaba to become the e-commerce platform with the largest number of consumers in China, and Pinduoduo burned 83.325 billion yuan in sales expenses and generated a net loss of 25.2 billion. And that doesn't take into account other costs, fees, and people.
In 2021, Pinduoduo chose to bid farewell to some of itself in the past five years - reducing market launch, controlling customer acquisition costs, and releasing profits.
While sales expenses have declined for three consecutive quarters, Pinduoduo achieved a cumulative pre-tax profit of 1.77 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2021. Management also said at the November earnings report that in the future, it will reduce marketing investment and increase investment in research and development.
During this period, founder Huang Zheng stepped down as chairman early and handed over the position to Chen Lei, an alumnus of the University of Wisconsin. In 2020, when Huang Zheng left the POSITION of CEO of Pinduoduo, he also let Chen Lei sit.
When announcing that he would not be CEO, Huang Zheng said that he would spend more time with the board of directors to formulate the company's medium- and long-term strategy, strive to promote Pinduoduo to the next level from the institutional level, and gradually become an internationally competitive public institution - but as a public company, Pinduoduo has not yet disclosed the company's real powerful figure - the actual manager of the internal business Abu (Gu Loujuan).
When announcing that he would not be the chairman, Huang Zheng said that Pinduoduo was still young and could grow rapidly for a long time, but someone had to explore how to let the company continue to grow at a high speed in ten years, and he was a "more suitable candidate."
More than a month later, China began an antitrust cycle and continued to strengthen data security legislation. From banning e-commerce "two choices" to proposing legislation to kill big data, from protecting and improving the rights and interests of platform economy employees to interviewing capital expansion, China's top level has tried to find a balance between growth and improving social imbalance and maintaining various security, and the power and responsibility relationship of the platform economy has also been re-examined.
Catching up with the weak macro environment and its own high base, Pinduoduo's advertising revenue grew by about 40% between June and September 2021, far lower than the previous five consecutive quarters of growth of more than 60% growth; the annual monthly active buyer growth rate was also the lowest since the listing (+17.4 million people); their sales expense ratio also fell to about 45% in the same period.
There's nothing more crashing than a growth stock turning into a value stock. Moreover, China is resetting its underlying economic logic. In 2021, Pinduoduo's market value was reduced by nearly 70%, and now it is only worth about 1.3 Baidu. As of press time, Pinduoduo's share price is $55.9 per share, with a market value of about $70 billion.
"Ten billion agricultural research" instead of "ten billion subsidies" has become the most favorite topic of management. This is Pinduoduo's initiative to address the critical needs of the agricultural sector and rural areas. According to them, profits from April 2021 will be used for this program until $10 billion is invested.
"As a company, our key strategy has always been to win the trust of users and create value for society, which we believe will also be our long-term asset." Chen Lei said last November. If you really want to do so, it is not enough to say goodbye to the past in part. (Gong Fangyi)
Ant Group: Say goodbye to most of yourself
The Hurun Research Institute recently named SpaceX the world's third most valuable unlisted company. If it weren't for an accident in 2020, Musk's rocket company would have come in second — a position now occupied by Ant Group, which the Hurun Research Institute has valued at 1 trillion yuan.
In the more than a year after the century IPO was urgently stopped, Ant Group was jointly interviewed twice by the central bank, the Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission and other financial authorities, and continued to rectify according to the requirements. They reduced Alipay's guidance to "Huabei" and "Borrowing", "encouraged" Yu'an Bao users to transfer their money to monetary fund products with higher yields, and applied for personal credit reporting licenses with Zhejiang State-owned Assets.
The biggest impact on the company's business level is the compliance rectification of consumer loan products. From June 2021, Ant Consumer Finance, which was approved to open for business, began to take on loans that had already been issued by Huabei and Borrowing. The segregation of consumer loan brands has also been carried out at the same time.
"Huabei" and "Borrowing" have become the exclusive consumer credit products of Ant Consumer Finance Company. The consumption installment loans issued by other financial institutions relying on the data provided by ants have been renamed "credit purchase" and "credit loan", corresponding to the original "Huabei" and "borrowing" respectively. In this way, ants tell consumers which credits are funded by them and which credits come from financial institutions that work with ants.
During the period of rectifying the old business and promoting the new business, Ant Group and its important subsidiaries made a series of important personnel adjustments.
The biggest adjustment is hu Xiaoming's resignation as CEO of Ant Group, chairman of Tianhong Fund, chairman of MYbank and legal representative. Taking over this series of positions are Jing Xiandong, chairman of Ant Group (concurrently CEO), Han Xinyi, CFO of Ant Group (also chairman of Tianhong Fund), and Jin Xiaolong, former president of MYbank (promoted to chairman and legal representative of MYbank). Feng Liang, the former vice president of MYbank, was hired as the president.
The newly established Ant Gold has a series of new personnel appointments. Huang Hao, president of Ant Group's digital finance business group, concurrently serves as the chairman of Ant Consumption Gold; Shao Wenlan, senior vice president of the Group, concurrently serves as the director of Ant Consumption Gold; and Chen Huaisheng, the person in charge of the original "Borrowing", is the general manager of Ant Consumption Gold.
In addition, Yin Ming, the former president of the insurance business group who left Ant in early 2021, returned to Ant in May of the same year after working for Sunshine Property & Casualty Insurance for more than four months to become the head of the strategic development department of the group and deal with the complicated situation with new and old colleagues.
The impact of various adjustments on the profitability of Ant Group is gradually emerging. According to the data disclosed by China Cinda, a shareholder of Ant Consumption, between June 4 and September 30, 2021, Ant Consumption's revenue was 291 million yuan and its net loss after tax was 525 million yuan.
According to Alibaba Group's financial report backwards Ant Group's data (regardless of accounting standard differences), Ant's net profit in the second quarter was about 19.922 billion yuan (calculated by CITIC Securities), including its investment in Indian takeaway platform Zomato of about 4.789 billion yuan. If this part is deducted, the net profit of Ant's continuing operations business is only about 6% year-on-year. (Gong Fangyi)
Quick Hand: Say goodbye to dual cores and adjust the rhythm
Since its launch in 2021, the user growth rate of Kuaishou (SEHK:01024) has slowed down to a certain extent compared with the past few years, and in order to cope with challenges and increase organizational flexibility, Kuaishou has made the largest organizational and personnel adjustment since the establishment of the company.
Su Hua, the founder of Kuaishou, stepped down as CEO for 8 years and became chairman, and co-founder Cheng Yixiao took over as CEO. The company's management structure, which used to be questioned, affected the company's decision-making efficiency, but now that there is no dual-core constraint, it is theoretically possible for Kuaishou to go faster and farther.
At the end of September 2021, Kuaishou established four major business units and main station production and transportation lines of e-commerce, commercialization, internationalization and games. After the reform, Kuaishou's business number one position will have greater power and more responsibilities, such as being responsible for input-output (ROI), while previously each business did not bear cost indicators.
Similar to ByteDance's proposal that organizations should "fatten and gain weight", Kuaishou also said that organizations need to "reduce costs and increase efficiency". Whether at home or abroad, Kuaishou has done a streamlining of business and management.
In terms of domestic business, Senior Vice President Wang Jianwei closed the main station product department, operation department, user growth department, game ecology and search business that were scattered in different departments in the past, becoming the only person in charge of the main station product; internationally, Kuaishou stopped the strategy of multi-product parallel progress and concentrated on the development of "Kwai" a product.
With yan qiang, the head of kuaishou operations, announcing his departure in 2021, the only executives who joined Kuaishou before 2017 were Su Hua, Cheng Yixiao, CTO Chen Dingjia, and CFO Zhong Yiqi.
In 2020, Kuaishou parachuted three senior executives, including Qiu Guangyu, who is responsible for internationalization, Chen Guocheng, head of e-commerce research and development, and Fan Li, head of e-commerce products, who are from Didi, Haro Chuxing and Alibaba. In 2021, there will only be one new management - Xu Jie, the head of the game division from NetEase.
However, the new CEO Cheng Yixiao will face no small challenges in the future.
According to the "China Internet Development Report 2021", there are about 1 billion netizens in the country, and the total number of Douyin and Kuaishou short video users has been about 900 million. Roughly calculated, there is only an incremental market for short video users of 100 million people left in the country.
The e-commerce business is also one of the core battlefields of the confrontation between the two. Kuaishou adheres to the differentiated strategy with Douyin. The former emphasizes the construction of a strong social trust relationship between fans and anchors, and fans enter the live broadcast room of favorite anchors based on personal preferences to shop and choose, so as to bring high repurchase to the platform; in contrast, Douyin relies on algorithm recommendations based on user interests, pays more attention to celebrities and well-known Internet celebrities with goods, and emphasizes brands and standards in the logic of goods.
Kuaishou used to grow at its own pace, but in the competition with Douyin, it was once disrupted. Now, it's trying to get its rhythm back. As of press time, Kuaishou's share price is 77.9 Hong Kong dollars, and its market value is 329.3 billion Hong Kong dollars, which is about 42.23 billion US dollars. (Gao Honghao)
Xiaomi: Adjusted 35 times, the car team is basically formed
In 2021, Xiaomi (SEHK: 01810) adjusted its organizational structure and personnel appointments 35 times, which was the most changed year since xiaomi's establishment in 2010. There are two main lines of adjustment, one is that Lei Jun handed over a number of direct management businesses and focused on car manufacturing; the other is to streamline the sales system and cope with the challenge of the mobile phone business under pressure.
Three of the senior management teams of Xiaomi Group Vice Presidents and above will leave Xiaomi in 2021, and they are:
Peng Zhibin, who was recruited from Country Garden in September 2020, left after being the chief human resources officer for less than half a year and went to Shenzhen McWell (e-cigarette company) as a senior vice president, or as the chief human resources officer;
Zhou Shouzi, who joined in 2015, first when Xiaomi's chief financial officer promoted the company's listing, in 2019 he took charge of the international business department, in 2020 he became a partner, and in March 2021, he jumped to ByteDance as chief financial officer, and later became the head of TikTok;
Gao Ziguang, who was promoted to vice president of the group in April 2020, is one of the core figures of Xiaomi's offline channel expansion in China, and is regarded as a case of Xiaomi attaching importance to cultivating young cadres.
The post-80s weekly capitalization and high self-glory of the departure, so that the average age of Xiaomi executives in addition to the natural increase of one year increased a lot. At the same time, their departure is also the main node of the change of Xiaomi executives in 2021.
When Zhou Shouzi announced his departure, Xiaomi promoted three senior vice presidents, namely Zeng Xuezhong (president of the mobile phone department) born in 1973, Zhang Feng (general manager of the notebook department, in charge of the TV department and major appliance department) born in 1969, and Lu Weibing (president of the China region and the international department) born in 1975, all of whom have more than 20 years of work experience in the mobile phone industry and control the production and sales of Xiaomi's core mobile phones and major appliances.
A week before Gao Ziguang announced his departure, Xiaomi promoted internal employee Zhu Dan to vice president and vice president of research and development of the mobile phone department. Zhu Dan worked at Motorola, joined Xiaomi in 2010 with the leader Zhou Guangping (co-founder of Xiaomi, former chief scientist), is Xiaomi's No. 54 employee, and has served as the director of the baseband department, the director of the product department, the general manager of the camera department and the general manager of the display touch department of the mobile phone department.
Xiaomi now has a total of 17 executives, which is 3 fewer than in 2020. The youngest is Jain Manu Kumar, the president of India, born in 1981. They are the main implementers of Lei Jun's "three-year global first" goal in August 2021.
The status quo is not optimistic, xiaomi mobile phone sales in the second quarter of last year rushed to the world's second place after the full pressure. They want to lead the team to gain a foothold in the overall weaker and more competitive mobile phone market, and confirm to the capital market that Xiaomi can afford a higher market value. In 2021, Xiaomi's stock price fell by about 43%, as of press time, Xiaomi's stock price is 18.52 Hong Kong dollars, and its market value exceeds 450 billion Hong Kong dollars, about 59.5 billion US dollars.
In addition, the Xiaomi Automobile business management team has basically taken shape, and many of them are xiaomi's old employees: Li Xiaoshuang, former general manager of Xiaomi's major appliances division, is now the vice president of Xiaomi Automobile, responsible for product, supply chain and marketing work; Yu Kai, former deputy chief of staff of Xiaomi's staff, is responsible for cockpit systems and other aspects; Ye Hangjun, chairman of Xiaomi's original technical committee, is responsible for research and development of automatic driving algorithms.
The only core member of Xiaomi Automobile with a car background is Li Tianyuan, the former senior designer of BMW Group. Hu Zhengnan, the former president of Geely Research Institute, who was once rumored to be xiaomi cars, later went to Lei Jun's Shunwei Capital to focus on smart cars.
They now manage 500 employees, finalize that the Xiaomi car factory will be in Beijing Yizhuang, preliminarily determine what kind of cars Xiaomi wants to build, and are working hard to promote mass production in the first half of 2024. (He Qianming)
Baidu: From using veterans to recruiting talents from outside
After experiencing multiple large-scale brain drains, Baidu's senior management and executive layers have been faulted, and Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU) has been filling the gaps in key positions.
In the two years before 2020, Baidu's approach is to let veterans return, such as Cui Shanshan, senior vice president of Baidu Group, and Shi Youcai, former special consultant of Baidu and head of sales of mobile ecological group (MEG). In order to retain people in Baidu's system, Baidu launched the largest promotion in 2020 - the number of promotion appointments in the middle and senior levels reached an all-time high of 54.
To a certain extent, the shi youcai incident reflects that the reuse of the elderly has its drawbacks, and the veterans are serious about love and righteousness, which is in line with values, but after all, it is far away from the front line for many years, and it may not be a suitable choice. Baidu's 2021 will re-recruit a large number of talents from the outside.
In 2021, Baidu's core management team is relatively stable, and there is no loss of senior management. In addition, Baidu has introduced a total of 5 middle and high-level people. One of the most notable changes is that the original future CFO Luo Rong joined Baidu as CFO, and the former Baidu CFO Yu Zhengjun became the chief strategy officer.
Baidu's war investment department has also undergone frequent personnel changes. Cai Xiang, the former head of Baidu's investment, left his post less than 6 months after his appointment, and then Lu Yuan, vice president and head of strategy of Baidu Group, was also transferred. A Baidu source said, "Robin (Robin Li) is not satisfied with the performance of the battle investment department. They were replaced by Li Xiaoyang, former vice president of 58 Group, and Qi Fei, former managing director of CICC's investment banking department.
Baidu also promoted Li Zhenyu to senior vice president of the group. Li Zhenyu is an "old Baidu person", he joined in 2007, successively served as the head of Baidu's basic technology departments and business units, and is currently the general manager of the intelligent driving business group. People familiar with him commented that Li Zhenyu is a management talent, and Robin is more tacit understanding, and can implement his ideas in place.
Under the wave of Internet companies joining the car-making wave, Baidu is no exception. In January 2021, Baidu announced the construction of a car, and the brand name was "Jidu". Baidu adopts the form of in-depth cooperation with traditional vehicle manufacturer Geely Automobile, and invites Xia Yiping, the former co-founder and CTO of Mobike, to serve as the CEO of Jidu Automobile.
Baidu internally believes that the past trough is not caused by unclear strategies, but by insufficient support for endogenous organizational capabilities. Therefore, do not talk about any changes and innovations first, but start from culture and values, so as to emancipate the mind and seek truth from facts.
In an interview with LatePost, Baidu's head of human resources, Cui Shanshan, said that in the past three years, Baidu has been doing the construction of cultural values and the improvement of organizational capabilities, "The outside world may not feel it, but our own perception is obvious." ”
Over the past three years, Baidu's market value has also slowly climbed, falling to less than $30 billion at its lowest, and now its stock price is $153 per share, and its market value has reached $53.3 billion. (Wan Pei)
Steady NetEase, game business executives are frequently poached
In 2021, most Chinese stock prices generally fell, while NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES) fell much smaller, only around 5.5%.
At the company's third quarter earnings call, Yang Zhaoxuan, CFO of the group, said that NetEase is a company driven by high-quality content and has strong self-research capabilities. NetEase shares have returned more than 25% annualized since their IPO and are among the few growth companies in the world that regularly pay quarterly dividends to shareholders.
Looking at the performance of several core businesses of NetEase in 2021, the game ushered in a bumper year due to the success of the mobile game "Harry Potter: Magic Awakening" and "Forever Doom"; NetEase Cloud Music not only successfully went public, but also became a beneficiary under anti-monopoly supervision; NetEase Yanxuan made organizational structure adjustments and confirmed the new strategy of doing branding rather than platforming.
In 2021, there are also a number of changes in the positions of many business leaders of NetEase.
Zen Studio, a former division of NetEase Games' original Poseidon Division, was promoted to a first-class division due to the launch of the popular Harry Potter: Magical Awakening, and its head, Jin Tao, was promoted to president of the Zen business unit. Previously, Jin Tao, as a producer, also led the team to develop another popular "Yin and Yang Division" mobile game of NetEase Games in recent years.
At the same time that Jin Tao was promoted, two other important game business leaders of NetEase left NetEase this year.
Xu Jie, director of ZhuRong Studio, former NetEase Game Thunderfire Game Business Group, has now joined Kuaishou as the head of the game business department.
Xu joined NetEase in 2007 and has participated in the production of important projects such as "Ghost of a Woman" and "Cold Water". "LatePost" learned that after Xu Jie left NetEase, ByteDance and Kuaishou had contact with him, and finally Kuaishou won because he promised him a higher position and management authority.
The other is Ye Qian, head of NetEase Games F Studio. The 16-year-old netease veteran has been in charge of games such as Terminator 2 and Bright Continent. After leaving office, he joined the Travel Card Network.
The biggest high-level change in NetEase's strict selection is the departure of COO Shi Wenyi.
Shi Wenyi was once one of the core executives strictly selected by NetEase. Under Shi Wen's tenure, she participated in the transformation of NetEase Yanxuan. NetEase Yanxuan was founded in 2016, and the first three years were more of a "platform" play, heavy GMV, and expanded categories. However, the feedback from the consumer side is not good, and the inventory at the production end is serious. In 2019, after the new CEO Liang Jun joined, NetEase Yanxuan began to transform into a brand.
According to "Late Post", after Shi Wenyi left his post, all his reporting lines were transferred to Liang Jun.
As of press time, NetEase's stock price is 99.71 US dollars, and the market value is 64.86 billion US dollars. Ranked 6th among china's listed Internet companies.
NetEase has long not competed for the first place and done a "small and beautiful" business, and although this strategy has deprived it of the opportunity to become an Internet giant, it has also enabled it to behave more steadily than other companies in the turbulent environment. (Gao Honghao)