Shares in Intime Retail (Group), a Chinese mall operator 32% owned by e-commerce giant Aliababa Group, soared by almost a fifth in Hong Kong today after the company announced that Alibaba’s new CEO Daniel Zhang is poised to become chairman next month.
Intime closed up by 19.9% to HK$15.30. The company's stock has nearly doubled in the past year.
Shen Guojun, the Chinese billionaire who is Intime's current chairman, won’t seek re-election as chairman of the Alibaba Group-backed company, Intime said in a statement this morning.
Shen “intends to focus his time and energy on his other business endeavors,” the statement said. “He no longer wishes to offer himself for re-election and shall retire as an executive director” after Intime’s annual general meeting on June 5, said Hong Kong-listed Intime.
Zhang, will replace Shen as chairman if he re-elected as a non-executive director at the general meeting, Intime in a statement. Zhang was named new CEO by Alibaba Group effective May 10, after Alibaba’s net profit in the first three months of the year dropped by 49% from a year earlier.
The move at Intime hints at new coordination between Intime and Alibaba, whose affiliates are investing heavily in logistics and related businesses. When Alibaba bought the Intime stake last year, it said it would improve the company's online-to-offline operations. Henderson Land Development, a company controlled by Hong Kong billionaire Lee Shau Kee, owns 6.8% of Intime.
The changes at Intime also come after Shen last month lowered his stake in the company to 30.4% from 33.1% through the sale of shares to Intime’s CEO Chen Xiaodong. Shen sold 60 million shares to Chen at a price of HK$8.70 each, for a total of HK$522 million, or about $67.3, Intime sad. Chen owned a 0.7% stake before the sale.
Alibaba’s chairman, Jack Ma, is China’s third-richest man, according to estimates by Forbes.
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