The Alibaba Group Holding’s board has authorized to upsize its share repurchase program to US$25 billion from US$15 billion, in a sign of confidence about the company’s continued growth in the future. The Share Repurchase Program will be effective for a two-year period through March 2024. As of March 18, 2022, the company had purchased a total of 56.2 million U.S. depositary shares under the previously announced share repurchase program, for a total consideration of approximately US$ 9.2 billion.
Alibaba also announced that Weijian Shan was appointed as an independent director to its board. Shan’s appointment as an independent director will be effective March 31, and he will serve on the board’s audit committee. Börje Ekholm, president and CEO of the Ericsson Group, will retire from the board on March 31, on which he has served as an independent director since June 2015. 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 TPG Asia) and a partner of TPG. Before that, he was a managing director of JP Morgan, where he was concurrently the chief representative for China between 1993 and 1998. Shan is a member of the international advisory council of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited.
