alibaba group holding limited baba founder jack ma staged the latest restructuring of the company from overseas amid chinas sweeping regulatory crackdown on the sector and intense competition despite having relinquished the executive chair position of alibaba in 2019 ma remained an influential figure and key decisionmaker at the company the wall street journal reports lately ma has held calls with alibabas top executives including the current chair and ceo daniel zhang and jane fang jiang alibabas deputy chief people officer guiding them to split up the company making it more agile and competitive and enhancing its reach to capital ma on monday made a surprise visit to a school in alibabas hometown of hangzhou his first known trip back to mainland china in almost a year ma appeared a day before alibaba disclosed its plans to split into six separate entities each with its ceo and board and free to pursue respective future ipos ma who traveled to hong kong late last week initially planned to head to japan early this week the sudden change in plans sparked speculation about whether he had struck any deal with chinas government ma chinas most famous tech billionaire had largely retreated from the public eye since alibaba and ant group attracted regulatory attention more than two years ago mas recent return followed repeated outreaches from beijing over recent months through retired communist party officials and fellow tycoons wsj writes alibabas reorganization was led by zhang an alibaba spokesperson said experts highlighted mas dealmaking prowess known for his ability to mobilize resources to innovate and beat foreign competitors in 2021 ceo mr zhang started to devolve more power to the heads of business units paving the way for spinoffs in consultation with ma price action baba shares closed higher by 350 at 10342 on thursday