Alibaba Group Holding has appointed Wan Ling Martello to serve on its main board and its audit committee from Sept. 1. Martello is the next non-Chinese national taking a leading role in further developing Alibaba’s international biz.
Martello is currently executive VP at consumer goods giant Nestle with responsibility for Asia, Oceania and sub-Saharan Africa. She was previously chief financial officer at Nestle and CFO at
Walmart International. Originally from the Philippines, and now a U.S. citizen, she is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien, Tagalog and English.
“As Alibaba grows globally, we need business leaders like Ms. Martello, to be part of the internationalisation process and help ensure it goes smoothly,” said Jack Ma, executive chairman of
Alibaba Group.
The announcement follows the recent appointment of former Goldman Sachs banker Michael Evans as Alibaba's head of international.
Separately, Alibaba announced that it will open its seventh cloud computing hub in Singapore and make Singapore the centre of its cloud computing business Aliyun.
Aliyun's new cloud data centre in Singapore will serve the cloud computing needs of businesses investing in Southeast Asia, with a focus on Chinese companies.
Nol van Fenema
Write a comment