Ex-Alibaba chair joins Hysan

Staff reporter and Bloomberg

Hysan Development (0014) has appointed former Alibaba (9988) chairman Daniel Zhang Yong as an independent non-executive director.

The largest landlord in Causeway Bay said in the appointment announcement that Zhang drove "numerous groundbreaking initiatives" and was the "ingenious architect" of the Double 11 online shopping gala in November.

Hysan said Zhang will receive a director's fee of HK$280,000 per annum and HK$108,000 annually for serving as a member of the audit and risk management committee, effective yesterday.

In 2022, Alibaba appointed Hysan's chair Irene Lee Yun-lien and former Ernst & Young China chair Albert Ng Kong-ping as independent directors, which then-chair and chief executive Zhang said represented a new progress of the company's continuous improvement in corporate governance.

Zhang has been low profile since he left China's e-commerce giant abruptly in 2023 after Joseph Tsai Chung-Hsin as chair and Eddie Wu Yongming as chief executive took control of the company.

In March, Zhang joined a little-known Chinese investment fund Firstred Capital as a managing partner.

As part of Zhang's move, Alibaba will become an anchor investor in Firstred, according to a person with knowledge of the deal. The Beijing-based outfit, which maintains a fairly low profile, was founded in 2019.