Jack Ma (front), the billionaire founder of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, reacts before receiving an honorary doctorate on business administration at the University of Hong Kong of Science and Technology in Hong Kong.REUTERS/Bobby Yip
Alibaba Group Holding updated its IPO filing on Monday and revealed the names of the 27-member group who, among other things, will have sole power to nominate a majority of the company's nine directors.
The company, headed by Jack Ma, has been criticized both for its management structure as well as secrecy around who was on the special panel.
According to the Wall Street Journal:
The board, which will consist of nine members—up from the four named in the pervious filing—will include Mssrs. Tsai, Ma, Lu and Zhang, as well as independent directors Chee Hwa Tung, Walter Teh Ming Kwauk, J. Michael Evans and Yahoo co-founderJerry Yang. Jacqueline Reses, a board member since December 2012 and Yahoo chief development officer, will resign, according to the filing.
The structure allows some shareholders, like CEO Jack Ma, to have more power than others, the report said. The report also noted that the unusual structure prevented the company from listing publicly in Hong Kong, where such governance is prohibited.
The company has been planning its IPO for quite some time and last month named James R. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to ex-U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, to run its international corporate affairs office, signaling its intention to grow into a major global operation after going public.
Alibaba plans to raise $1 billion initially, and then $15 billion to $20 billion, which could surpass Facebook’s $16 billion initial public offering in 2012.
