Ding Lei retreated

Image source @ Visual China

Text | Zero-state LT, author | Zhang Yao, editor| Hu Zhanjia

Ding Lei, who has just arrived at the age of "knowing the Destiny of Heaven," seems to want to conform to the trend of "retirement."

According to the information disclosed by the enterprise investigation, on April 25, 2022, Beijing NetEase Media Co., Ltd. underwent industrial and commercial changes, and Ding Lei stepped down as a legal person, general manager and director. At the same time, Li Li, CEO of NetEase Media, began to take over the positions of legal person, manager, and executive director. Although NetEase replied afterwards that this is just a normal industrial and commercial change, combined with the data of enterprise investigation statistics, in the past three years, 11 Internet bigwigs have left the front line, including Ma Yun, Zhang Yiming, Liu Qiangdong and so on. Therefore, this also casts a turbulent shadow on NetEase's "industrial and commercial changes".

No matter what Ding Lei's choice is after that, it is not difficult to find that it is the trend of the times for the Internet big guy to leave the front-line work. But the problem is that in recent years, the mobile Internet dividend is narrowing, the competition between companies is becoming increasingly fierce, these Internet giants are in the stage of young and powerful, why not choose "retirement"?

01 Success and fame have receded into the trend

Although on the whole, more and more Internet bigwigs choose to leave the front-line work before they reach the age station, from the company's point of view, there are two very different states before the Internet bigwigs "retire".

Of course, many natures are high-profile publicity of the company, and the founder leads the company to become a hegemon, and the rapids after success and fame are brave. Take Jack Ma, who founded Alibaba in 1999 and, after decades of hard work, led Alibaba to a successful IPO of a record $25 billion in 2014.

It is worth noting that as early as a year before Alibaba's listing, that is, in 2013, Ma Yun stepped down as ceo of Alibaba Group. After the listing, Ma Yun continued to "stay away" from Ali. In 2019, Jack Ma resigned as chairman of Alibaba's board of directors. The 2021 financial report shows that it is no longer in the list of Alibaba's shareholding shareholders.

Coincidentally, in July 2020, Huang Zheng also announced his resignation as CEO of Pinduoduo. Although it was only about five years after the establishment of Pinduoduo at this time, as early as July 2018, Huang Zheng led the former to land on the capital market. At the same pace as Pinduoduo's listing, Huang Zheng's wealth also expanded rapidly. According to the "2018 Hurun Rich List", after the listing of Pinduoduo, Huang Zheng appeared on the list for the first time, with a personal wealth of 95 billion yuan, ranking thirteenth.

Contrary to Ma Yun, Huang Zheng and others who took the initiative to leave the front line, there are also Internet bigwigs who are forced to leave the front line under the pressure of the situation.

As the founder of JD.com, Liu Qiangdong has repeatedly made blunt remarks in front of the media to establish a reliable personality for JD.com. But in September 2018, Liu Qiangdong's image was lost due to his involvement in the Minnesota sexual assault incident, which also caused JD.com's stock price to evaporate 100 billion yuan in three months.

Subsequently, Liu Qiangdong not only "retired" and never appeared in front of the media, in April 2022, Xu Lei officially served as the CEO of JD Group and an executive director of the board of directors. This also means that JD.com has officially opened the era of professional managers.

02 Retirement or "Retirement"

According to the traditional concept of occupation, retirement means leaving the company completely and no longer asking about the right and wrong of the company. Although the job changes of Internet tycoons have been consistently called "retirement" by the media, the rich Internet tycoons in recent years have not "retired".

For example, despite repeatedly publicizing that he has "retired", Ma Yun still waved the flag for Ant Financial at the Bund Finance Summit held in Shanghai on October 24, 2020. As early as three months before Ma Yun spoke on the Bund, Ant Group issued an announcement that it would be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Two days after Ma Yun's speech, Ant Group issued an announcement that the total amount of financing raised by the simultaneous listing of the two places was 230 billion yuan, the largest IPO record in global history.

Although Ma Yun had already "retired" with a high profile when Ant Financial sought to go public, even if he no longer held any position in Ant Financial, Ma Yun still "remotely" the former through the employee shareholding platform and Alibaba. In fact, this just shows the characteristics of Ma Yun's "retirement" - retiring without rest.

In 2013, Ma Yun announced that he would step down as CEO of Alibaba and also announced the partnership system. Under this system, partners have exclusive right to nominate more than half of the seats on the board. It is worth noting that the partnership system also specifically stipulates that Ma Yun is a permanent partner of Alibaba. This also means that even if he retires, Ma Yun can still firmly control Ali.

Coincidentally, although Liu Qiangdong has ceded the position of CEO of JD.com to Xu Lei, the former still firmly controls JD.com. According to JD.com's latest 20-F filing with the US SEC, as of March 31, 2022, Liu Qiangdong held 13.8% of JD.com's shares and had 76.1% of the voting rights, making him the largest "talker" of JD.com. When announcing the appointment of Xu Lei, president of JD Group, as CEO of JD Group, JD.com also stressed that Xu Lei needed to "report to Liu Qiangdong, chairman of the board of directors of JD Group.".

In this sense, Liu Qiangdong's "retirement" is of greater significance, perhaps in order to reduce the negative impact that personal opinion may have on the company.

Ding Lei, mentioned at the beginning, did not escape this law. According to Tianyancha data, although Ding Lei stepped down from many positions in NetEase Media, he still holds 99% of the latter's shares, ranking the largest shareholder.

In general, because he is the founder of the company, he holds a large number of equity that symbolizes wealth, and the equity is related to the management right of the company, based on this, if he does not give up his equity, even if the Internet tycoons step down from more positions, they are just covering their ears.

03 The era of the big guy is a thing of the past

Since there is no plan to completely put down the company, why are more and more Internet tycoons "retiring" in disguise in the past two years?

First of all, it is undeniable that in the early stage of the development of the Internet, many Internet tycoons led relevant enterprises to innovate in the model and create a business myth with strong personal ability and fighting spirit. For example, key decisions such as JD.com's transformation to e-commerce, all-category expansion, and self-built warehouse with integrated logistics system are all from Liu Qiangdong.

However, with the gradual maturity of enterprises, in order to pursue higher profits, Internet giants, on the one hand, as the godfather of entrepreneurship, have written in front of the public to write non-decorative Lide statements, such as The innovative financial platform Ant Financial in Ma Yun's mouth, and the "Lakeside University" founded by Ma Yun that focuses on cultivating a new generation of entrepreneurs is also controversial.

What is intriguing is that after resigning as chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba in 2019, Ma Yun also frequently talked in front of the media as the godfather of entrepreneurship, until the Shanghai Bund incident fermented, and then in 2021, he took the initiative to rename "Lakeside University" to "Zhejiang Lakeside Entrepreneurship Research Center", suspend enrollment, and further reduce personal influence.

In fact, Ma Yun's decline is not isolated.

Once upon a time, the World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen was also an annual "show" for Internet giants. During the meeting, the big guys either staggered or sold products, and they could always swipe the screen on the Internet. For example, the "Dongxing Dinner Bureau" in 2017 was interpreted by various media because of the participation of Internet giants such as Ma Huateng, Liu Qiangdong, and Cheng Wei.

By the Time of the 2021 World Internet Conference, we have not seen Internet bigwigs gathered together, and we have also seen some Internet bigwigs begin to make the main theme of the country and the people. For example, Zhou Hongyi, chairman and CEO of 360, said: "Internet companies should not always worry about the three melons and two dates in the pockets of the people, trying to monopolize a certain industry and charge 'tolls'." Instead, it is necessary to solve key problems on some of the country's 'card neck' problems, and to serve the country with science and technology. ”

In May 2019, in an interview with CCTV, Ren Zhengfei said: "I don't need to worry about too many things about Huawei specifically." I am already a puppet at Huawei, this puppet is that people come to ask you to count, do not ask me, I do not know. ”

As a world-class technology company, Huawei's former leaders have actually provided a growth sample for the Internet industry. In periods of industry chaos, great leaders do help businesses grow, but when the business is mature enough, the exit of leaders is somewhat necessary.

Returning to the beginning of the article, when the news of Ding Lei's retirement spread, according to the latest financial report, in 2021, NetEase's revenue was 87.61 billion yuan, an increase of 18.9% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the company's shareholders was 16.857 billion yuan, an increase of 39.74% year-on-year. In the face of such a report card, I don't know if Ding Lei has the courage to retire completely.