Alibaba appoints Weijian Shan to Board
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE:BABA) today announced that Weijian Shan, executive chairman of investment group PAG, was appointed as an independent director to the company’s board.
Shan’s appointment as an independent director will be effective March 31, 2022, and he will serve on the board’s audit committee. Börje Ekholm, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ericsson Group, will retire from the Company’s board on March 31, 2022. Ekholm has served as an independent director on the Company’s board since June 2015.
“I have been deeply impressed with the growth and achievements of Alibaba, and with how it has positively changed lives of so many consumers and businesses in China and elsewhere. It served about 1 billion consumers in China and 300 million around the world in 2021 alone. I feel honored to be invited by the board to serve as an independent director. I look forward to contributing the little I know to help the Company achieve its long-term goals,” said Shan.
Weijian Shan is the executive chairman and a founder of PAG – one of Asia’s leading independent alternative investment management groups with more than US$50 billion in capital under management by March 2022. He became PAG’s chairman and CEO and founded its private equity business in 2010.
Between 1998 and 2010, he was a managing partner of the private equity firm Newbridge Capital (now known as TPG Asia) and a partner of TPG. Shan was a managing director of JP Morgan, where he was concurrently the chief representative for China between 1993 and 1998.
He was an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School, the University of Pennsylvania between 1987 and 1993. He also worked at the World Bank in 1987 as a member of its Young Professionals Program.
Shan is a member of the International Advisory Council of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited. He served as an independent director of Singapore-listed Wilmar International Limited between 2018 and 2021.
Shan holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco. He graduated with a major in English from the Beijing Institute of Foreign Trade (currently the Beijing University of International Business and Economics).