Daniel Zhang Yong () is a Chinese technology executive. He is currently the CEO of Alibaba Group. Before becoming the CEO, Zhang was best known for his roles as CEO of

Taobao Taobao () is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it is the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba ...

and president of Tmall (owned by Alibaba). While running Tmall, Zhang created the Singles' Day shopping holiday, an annual Chinese sales event with gross sales reaching four times higher than Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined. In 2020, Zhang was included on ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

''s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Early life and education

Zhang was born in Shanghai in 1972. He studied finance at

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics The Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SUFE; ), founded in 1917, is a finance- and economics-oriented research university located in Shanghai, the People's Republic of China. The university is under the direct administration of the ...

Career

After graduation, he worked for

Barings Bank Barings Bank was a British merchant bank based in London, and one of England's oldest merchant banks after Berenberg Bank, Barings' close collaborator and German representative. It was founded in 1762 by Francis Baring, a British-born member ...

, just before its bankruptcy due to trader Nick Leeson. 1995-2002, he worked for one of the former "Big Five" accounting firms Arthur Andersen which collapsed due to the Enron scandal. He then worked for

PwC PricewaterhouseCoopers is an international professional services brand of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. It is the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounti ...

for two years starting in 2002. Zhang first joined

(an Alibaba subsidiary) in 2007 as its

chief financial officer The chief financial officer (CFO) is an officer of a company or organization that is assigned the primary responsibility for managing the company's finances, including financial planning, management of financial risks, record-keeping, and fina ...

. The following year he became the

chief operating officer A chief operating officer or chief operations officer, also called a COO, is one of the highest-ranking executive positions in an organization, composing part of the " C-suite". The COO is usually the second-in-command at the firm, especially if ...

of Taobao. In 2011, Zhang was promoted to president of Tmall, a business-to-consumer shopping spinoff from Taobao. It was during his time running Tmall that Zhang launched the Singles' Day shopping event. In 2013, Zhang was promoted to chief operating officer of Alibaba Group, and eventually succeeded Jonathan Lu as the CEO in 2015. On September 10, 2018, Jack Ma announced that Zhang would also take over as executive chairman, effective in one year on September 10, 2019. Alibaba employees pick nicknames for themselves when they first join the company. Daniel Zhang's nickname is "Free and Unfettered Person" ().

References

1972 births Living people 21st-century Chinese businesspeople Alibaba Group people Businesspeople from Shanghai Chinese chief financial officers Chinese chief executives Chinese computer businesspeople PricewaterhouseCoopers people Shanghai University of Finance and Economics alumni Shanda people {{China-bio-stub