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 C ...

and president of

Tmall Tmall (), formerly Taobao Mall, is a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail, spun off from Taobao, operated in China by Alibaba Group. It is a platform for local Chinese and international businesses to sell brand- ...

(owned by Alibaba). While running Tmall, Zhang created the

Singles' Day The Singles' Day () or Double 11 (), originally called Bachelors' Day, is a Chinese unofficial holiday and shopping season that celebrates people who are not in a relationship. The date, 11 November (11/11), was chosen because the numeral 1 res ...

shopping holiday, an annual Chinese sales event with gross sales reaching four times higher than Black Friday and

Cyber Monday Cyber Monday is a marketing term for e-commerce transactions on the Monday after Thanksgiving in the United States. It was created by retailers to encourage people to shop online. The term was coined by Ellen Davis of the National Retail ...

combined. In 2020, Zhang was included on ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, t ...

''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 of ...

, just before its bankruptcy due to trader

Nick Leeson Nicholas William Leeson (born 25 February 1967) is an English former derivatives trader whose fraudulent, unauthorized and speculative trades resulted in the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom's oldest merchant bank. Leeson was ...

. 1995-2002, he worked for one of the former "Big Five" accounting firms

Arthur Andersen Arthur Andersen was an American accounting firm based in Chicago that provided auditing, tax advising, consulting and other professional services to large corporations. By 2001, it had become one of the world's largest multinational corporat ...

which collapsed due to the

Enron scandal The Enron scandal was an accounting scandal involving Enron Corporation, an American energy company based in Houston, Texas. Upon being publicized in October 2001, the company declared bankruptcy and its accounting firm, Arthur Andersen then ...

. 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 accounting ...

for two years starting in 2002. Zhang first joined

(an Alibaba subsidiary) in 2007 as its chief financial officer. 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 t ...

of Taobao. In 2011, Zhang was promoted to president of

, a business-to-consumer shopping spinoff from Taobao. It was during his time running Tmall that Zhang launched the

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 Jack Ma Yun (; born 10 September 1964) is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. In addition, he co-founded Yunfen ...

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