Questions in this section are based on the following article. Alibaba to Split Into Six Groups and Explore [PCs in 21 Departure From Jack Ma Era. Founded in 1999 by Jack Ma. a former English teacher from Hangzhou, Alibaba is claimed to be the world's largest online commerce company. It has three main sites: Taobao, Tmall and Alibabacom. The former is actually Alibaba's biggest shopping site. It hosts T million merchants which sell everything from clothes to decorations and it is free for users. However. sellers can pay for ads to make a difference within the crowd. There are hundreds of millions of people using Alibaba as well as millions of merchants and businesses hosted there. With this being said and within this fastgrowing e-commerce market. Alibaba is the most well" known place to visit for online shopping. At some point, transactions on its online sites reached $248 billion which are signicantly more than those of eBay and Amazoncom combined. In fact, according to recent researches. in 2018 Alibaba made RM3250,266 million in transactions, RM3376,344 million in 2019 while in 2929 it reached RMBEDQJH million. As a result, Alibaba makes up 80% of China's online shopping market. Fast forwarding 22 years. Alibaba to split into six groups and explore IPOs in a departure from Jack his are Chinese tech giant makes announcement just after its co-founder reappeared in China after months overseas. Alibaba Co-Founder Jack Ma visits shool in China after year overseas. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. BABA 3.46% increase; green up pointing triangle said it plans to split itself into six independently run companies that could seek separate IPOs, effectively dismantling a business empire built over two decades by charismatic entrepreneur Jack Ma just as the tycoon reappeared in China. The reorganization of one of China*s largest privatesector companies. once valued at more than $300 billion but now worth about a quarter of that. comes after Chinese authorities signaled in recent months they were winding down a sweeping regulatory clampdown aimed at reining in the country's powerful tech sector. Mr. Ma. a co-founder who built Alibaba into one of the world's biggest e- commerce companies on China's rising affluence. was once known for his outspoken views. But since China embarked on its campaign to tame internet companies, the billionaire has largely kept a low profile and remained abroad. He returned to mainland China in recent days for the first known time in almost a year. visiting a school in the eastern city of Hangzhou where Alibaba is based. Alibaba's planned reorganization reverses efforts to centralize operations. Alibaba's restructuring culminates a yearslcng shift inside the company to make it more nimble after Mr. Ma stepped back from the company's helm in 2019. It reverses a centralization drive he embarked upon before his departure in which he sought to bring the company's subsidiaries and affiliates into closer alignment. part of the socalled Alibaba Economy. The power of tech titans such as Mr. Ma and their inuence over society caused unease in Beijing: Companies such as Alibaba have a grip on data of more than a billion users and investments across a range of companies in lChina. Beijing has in the past criticized the \"disorderly expansion" of the country's biggest internet companies. "If you don't change yourself. you will be defeated by the times,\" Alibaba Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel Zhang said in a letter to employees reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. He added that Alibaba's various businesses are facing different challenges and market conditions. Under the restructuring. Alibaba's various businesses will be split up into six major areas: cloud computing. Chinese e-commerce. global e-commerce. digital mapping and food delivery. logistics, and media and entertainment. the company said Each business group would have its own CEO reporting to a board of directors and be fully responsible for the group's performance. Alibaba Group is set to become a holding company overseen by lvtr. Zhang. Those business groups will be allowed to raise external capital and seek initial public offerings when they are ready. Alibaba said. Its domestic commerce business will remain a wholly owned unit of Alibaba. it added. Mr. Ma, 58 years old. was listed as a committee member of Alibaba Partnership. a strategy-making body of senior executives. in the company's latest annual report published last July. He held less than 5% in Alibaba Group at the time. Mr. Zhang in February said he saw 2023 as a year of progress for Alibaba. In videotaped remarks published by Chinese business publication Yicai on Tuesday, he said the reorganization was a big step forward. He explained the main reason to reorganize is to improve the sprawling business empire's organizational efficiency. He said splitting the businesses would make each area more agile to better compete with rivals. Alibaba has been weighed down by fierce competition in its bread-and-butter domestic e-commerce business in the past few years. Rivals JD.com Inc. and PDD Holdings Inc.'s Pinduoduo have continued to bite into Alibaba's market share. In addition, short-video platforms including ByteDance Ltd.'s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and Kuaishou Technology increasingly pose a challenge. Alibaba's revenue growth in the past two quarters performed below the overall growth in China's e-commerce sales of physical goods. Mr. Zhang has acknowledged competition and said the company would explore innovative ways to better engage with customers, such as live streaming and smart recommendations.Alibaba business-segment revenue, in billions of Chinese yuan, nine months ended Dec. 31, 2022 China commerce: Cloud : 58.6 446.7 International Commerce : 50.7 Cainiao : 42.1 Local Consumer services :37.6 Digital media and entertainment : 23.3 Note: *1 billion=$0.1452 billion. Cainiao represents revenue from logistics services and supply-chain management. In 2021, the Journal reported that Mr. Zhang had been delegating more power to the heads of Alibaba's various business units, which had the potential to open the way for spinoffs and independent fundraisings. The move echoes previous sweeping reorganizations by Western tech giants such as Google, which created Alphabet Inc. as a holding company while separating its growing cast of businesses. Still, the holding-company structure isn't common for Chinese tech giants. In 2021, ByteDance reorganized its operations, formerly divided by functions, into six business units that now focus on different product lines. Alibaba's split comes after Mr. Ma reappeared in China and at a time when Beijing is seeking to revive entrepreneurs' confidence following more than two years of regulatory clampdowns and Covid-19 restrictions. The announcement wasn't related to his return, people inside the company said. The listing status of Alibaba's shares in New York and Hong Kong won't be affected, people familiar with the matter said. Alibaba's American depositary receipts climbed more than 9% in early trading on Tuesday in New York.Beijing started to crack down on the Chinese tech sector in late 2020. calling off Ant Group Co's blockbuster lP-Os. The cancellations came after Mr. Ma's speech at a financial forum drew the ire of regulators by criticizing their work as anachronistic. Regulators subsequently launched a probe into Alibaba for alleged anticompetitive behavior on its ecommerce platform and later hit the company with a record $2.8 biliion ne. Regulators also slapped hefty nes on other tech giants over issues including antitrust and datasecurity breaches. erasing more than $1 trillion in market value from China's largest publicly listed tech companies. Hopes that regulatory headwinds may be easing began to build as the country's top brass sounded more conciliatory toward private businesses. Buttighter oversight has become the new normal, and in January. Chinese authorities acquired a stake in a subsidiary of Alibaba. The sudden disappearance of star investment banker Fan Bao recently sent shivers through China's business community. Like many large tech companies that are burgeoning conglomerates. Alibaba has expanded its ecosystem by offering consumers and businesses multifaceted services. from shopping and travel to payments and logistics. Since 2020. Aiibaba has been establishing subsidiaries based on business functions. Apart from the six companies. other businesses could be regrouped as similar independent entities in the future while teams such as research, data management, nance and human resources will be spread across subsidiaries. Mr. Zhang said in his letter to employees. \"This transformation will empower all our businesses to become more agile. enhance decision-making and enable faster responses to market changes." he said. Mr. Zhang is set to continue to lead the cloud-computing division. Questions for the article. 1. Briey relate the main issue of the article. (5 Marks) 2. Examine TEN (10} different strategies that Ali Baba's business has used over its years of its establishment and the impact to the company. {20 Marks) 3. Appraise why was the founder of Alibaba made decision to reorganized the business? (5 Marks) 4. Presume you need to advice Jack Ma to judge the best strategy matching for Alibaba, select TWO {2) strategies that you would undertake and justify chosen of the strategies.{20 Marks) 5. Relating to Question 4, assess FIVE {5) issues that the management may encounter while implementing the strategies. (20 Marks)