Alibaba's Jack Ma Is Moving On, With an IPO Looming

Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma, who on Tuesday announced to employees his plans to step down as chief executive officer, has been thinking about retirement for a while. In June, Ma told me and my colleague Frederik Balfour about his interest in taking a step back from his role in running China’s largest e-commerce company. “Some day Jack Ma is going to retire—maybe not very long [from now],” he said then. “Life is so short. I don’t want to be 80 years old and still running this company.”

Now he is following through on that promise. Ma, who turned 48 in September, will retire as CEO this spring, the company announced on its Alizila website. “Stepping down as CEO is a difficult decision, for this could be confounding especially for someone of my age who should be at the height of his career,” Alizila reported Ma saying in a letter to employees. But, he added, “at 48 I am no longer ‘young’ for the Internet business.”