Didi’s Liu giving up roles as president, board director
DIDI Global president Jean Liu is relinquishing her roles as president and board director of China’s ride-hailing giant after almost a decade in the positions, as the company tries to revive growth following a regulatory crackdown by the government.
Liu, a director and president of the company since December 2014, will become a permanent partner and continue to report to chief executive officer Will Cheng as chief people officer, according to an internal letter to employees on Sunday (May 19). Didi’s management will no longer have a president and Liu’s responsibilities will not change, it said.
“This is what I really want to do from the bottom of my heart,” Liu wrote in the internal memo. “Please rest assured I will keep fighting with you all and be the best of myself in the next 10 years.”
Liu is one of the few high-profile female executives in China’s tech industry, and is the daughter of Lenovo Group founder Liu Chuanzhi. The former Goldman Sachs Group executive was one of the driving forces behind the success of Didi, including securing the backing of tech giants including Tencent and Uber Technologies, and capital from a host of finance powerhouses from SoftBank Group to Blackrock.
The ride-hailing platform looks set to benefit from China’s recent supportive measures for overseas listings, after being targeted by the government in its campaign to rein in the country’s powerful Internet industry. Didi was fined more than eight billion yuan (S$1.5 billion) in 2022, and was found to have violated three laws, with those illegal operations threatening national security, the Internet overseer said.
China this month approved a US listing by autonomous driving startup Pony.ai, raising the potential for an increase in Chinese tech initial public offerings (IPOs) in New York after a more than two-year hiatus. The China Securities Regulatory Commission said it would support overseas listings of tech firms.
Didi was planning to list on Hong Kong’s stock exchange this year after it was forced to delist from New York, Bloomberg News reported. Its shares, now traded only over-the-counter in New York, rose 21 per cent this year to US$4.78 and its market capitalisation recovered to US$23 billion, but is still well shy of its IPO price of US$14 in 2021.
The firm may also face possible class action suits from IPO investors for concealing compliance issues ahead of the listing, a US judge ruled in March.
Didi’s revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 rose 55 per cent from a year earlier, suggesting the company is progressing in its endeavour to reclaim market share lost since 2021.
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