Ma Yun, founder of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group announced that he would be stepping down from the position of CEO in May.
Instead, Ma will concentrate on his work as chairman of the Alibaba Group board of directors to help the new CEO cultivate talents and to develop the group's public welfare.
Alibaba Group just completed the biggest organizational structure change since its establishment in 1999.
Ma suggested his successor is likely to come from the group's mature management team.
Moreover, he hopes to take up the post of the first headmaster of Taobao University.
As of December last year, the total value of transactions conducted on Taobao Marketplace and Tmall, the two flagship online retail platforms owned by the Group, exceeded 1 trillion yuan, or roughly $160 billion.
For more on the story, we now cross live to Ben Cavender, Associate principal at China Market Research in Shanghai
