Alibaba's Lingxi Games says management to step down to make way for younger execs

By Josh Ye

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Lingxi Games, Alibaba Group's video games arm, has told staff its leadership team will step down to make way for younger management, according to an internal memo.

Since last year, Alibaba has focused on promoting younger people born after 1985 to management teams - a strategy it says will help the tech giant maintain a startup mindset and prevent it from getting stuck in old ways.

The policy is part of a sweeping restructuring that has seen it adopt a holding company management model and split its business into six main units.

Alibaba's domestic e-commerce, cloud and local services divisions have also seen changes in leadership in the past year.

Zhan Zhonghui, the head of the Lingxi Games, said in a company-wide email seen by Reuters that he and two other executives will step down by the end of March.

Zhou Bingshu, an experienced game producer, will take over.

Zhan is about 50 years of age and Zhou is in his mid-30s, according to a source with knowledge of the matter who was not authorised to speak to media and declined to be identified.

Alibaba did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

Lingxi Games is best known for the mobile game "Three Kingdom Tactics" released in 2019 and produced by Zhou. The strategy game, in which players compete to build empires, made more than $1 billion in revenue in the first two years after its release, according to market research firm SensorTower.

Zhan founded Guangzhou Ejoy in 2011 after working at NetEase Inc for more than a decade, where he had served as chief operating officer. Ejoy was acquired by Alibaba in 2017 at a valuation of $1 billion and became Lingxi Games.

(Reporting by Josh Ye in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Casey Hall in Shanghai; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)