關於阿里巴巴的領導層,你要知道的五件事

On Friday morning, Jack Ma,the charismatic and already super-wealthy founder of Alibaba Group, isexpected to ring the bell of the New YorkStock Exchange. It will mark the much-anticipated debut of shares of the Chinese company, and could become theworld's largest initial public offering are some key points you should know about the people leading thise-commerce giant:

週五早上，馬雲---這位極富魅力且超級富有的阿里巴巴集團的創始人，將在萬衆期待下，敲響紐約證券交易所的開市鈴。這將標誌着這家中國公司備受期許的股票首秀的上演，同時它也可能成爲迄今爲止規模最大的IPO。以下是一些你應該知曉的要點，可以幫助你瞭解這家電子商務巨頭的領導者們。

Mais not actually the CEO.

事實上，馬雲並不是CEO

The name behind this massivestock offering may be the founder and the company's face — and a very visible one at that — but he's nottechnically the CEO. Ma stepped down as chief executive in January 2013, and a few months laterJonathan Lu took the CEO title.

這次大規模募股背後的名字或許是阿里的創始人和這間公司的招牌人物，也就是最引人矚目的那個，但嚴格說來，馬雲並不是CEO。馬雲在2013年的一月就已經從首席執行官的位置上退下來了，數月後陸兆禧便繼任了CEO一職。

Lu, whose first job after college was at the receptiondesk of a Holiday Inn in China, has been described as Ma's "corporatealter-ego." He's a sort of Tim Cook to Jack Ma's Steve Jobs — thesoft-spoken, behind-the-scenes operator who focuses on the company's current needs while Ma, now executive chairman, is the visionary. Still, as arecent New York Times profile reminded us, Ma continuesto act not only as the public face but as the chiefnegotiator, the top strategist and the biggest individual shareholderwho remains very much in control.

陸兆禧，他大學畢業後的第一份工作是在中國的一家假日酒店當前臺，他曾被形容爲馬雲的“商業上的知己”，他之於馬雲就如庫克之於喬布斯一樣。這位語調輕柔的幕後經營者關注的是公司現時的需要，而馬雲，也就是現在的執行主席，則是那個有長遠目光的人。然而，正如近期紐約時報的一份簡介所告訴我們的，馬雲在繼續扮演公衆人物的同時，還擔任阿里的首席談判代表、最高戰略制定者和最大的個體持股人。

Another behind-the-scenes person of note: Simon Xie, a co-founder and vice president, is the only person besides Ma who owns the "variable-interest entities" that hold the operating licenses tovarious Web sites that are critical to Alibaba's business. Accordingto Reuters,the unassuming Xie helps run Alibaba's investment division and is not a memberof the 30-person steering committee that manages the company (see below), buthe is still "one of Ma's most trusted business partners."

另一個重要的幕後人物就是謝世煌，阿里的合夥創始人之一兼公司副總。他是除馬雲外唯一一個擁有“可變利益實體”的人，這些“可變利益實體”掌握着對阿里的生意至關重要的衆多網站的經營權。根據路透社的報道，低調的謝世煌幫助經營阿里巴巴的投資部門，但不屬於管理公司的30人指導委員會的成員，但他仍是馬雲最爲信賴的商業夥伴之一。

2. Its governance structureis novel, and possibly unprecedented, for a company of this size.

阿里的管理結構很新奇，對於這麼大的公司來說，可能是前所未有的。

Alibaba Group has an unorthodox approachto governing itself. In filings,it writes that the company has acted like a partnership in many ways since its founders first got together in Jack Ma's apartment in 1999. As aresult, in 2010 it established the "Alibaba Partnership," a now 30-member steering committee made up of managers at Alibaba Group andrelated companies. Alibaba says this arrangement allows executives to focus on the long-term, collaborate better and "override bureaucracy andhierarchy."

阿里集團有着非傳統的經營方式，根據歸檔記錄，自從1999年它的發起人們在馬雲的公寓第一次聚會開始，阿里巴巴在很多方面都一直像是個合夥企業。最爲結果，在2010年“阿里巴巴合夥人”成立了，它是一個擁有30名成員的指導委員會，它的成員包括阿里集團和其他相關公司的高管。阿里巴巴聲稱這種安排能讓管理者把眼光放得更長遠，更好地合作並且可以不受官僚主義和等級制的制約。

In filings, the company also noted it sees this as a better alternative todual-class share structures, which have been used in other tech giants. In those, votes by shareholders (often founders) who own acertain class of stock carry a disproportionate weight. Alibaba has argued its structure "is designed to embody the vision of a large group of managementpartners. This structure is our solution for preserving the culture shaped byour founders while at the same time accounting for the fact that founders will inevitably retire from the company."

這家公司還特別提到，它把這種經營方式視爲一種“雙重持股結構”的更優替代品，雖然其他的科技業巨頭都已經採用了“雙重持股結構”。在這樣的結構下，一個擁有特定比例股權的持股人（通常是創始人），他們的決策與選擇往往有着不成比例的分量。阿里巴巴則說它自己的結構是爲了“體現大型合夥集團的想法。這種結構可以保留由發起人塑造的企業文化，畢竟這些發起人終有一天會退休。”

Yet while those Alibaba managers in the partnership don't have outsized votes, they do have a very special privilege: They get to nominate a majority of the company's governing body, its board of directors.

雖然這些阿里巴巴的合夥人沒有超額的投票權，但他們確實有一種特權：那就是，他們可以提名公司管理部門的大多數席位，也就是他們的董事會。

That means, in effect, they have the power to choose whom they answer to. "You're basicallyceding control to management," says Charles Elson, the director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governanceat the University of Delaware. "It's very unusual. I've never seen anything like it for a company of this size."

說白了，他們有選擇他們要對誰負責的權力。“你基本上放棄了對管理的控制”查理斯·埃爾斯，特拉華大學約翰·L·維恩伯格企業管理中心的主任說道“這非同尋常，我從來沒見過這麼大的公司弄這種東西。”

3. That — plus Ma's comment that "shareholders comethird" — could be a concern for some investors.

馬雲說“股東只排第三”。對於投資者來說，這值得關注。

Sinceinsiders have so much control over the board, some governance experts wonderwhat that means for the board's independence and efficacy. Harvard Law School's Lucian Bebchuk, for example, detailed his concerns in a recent NewYork Times e that risk doesn't seem to be keeping many people away from the huge stock offering, some investors have called it out as a warning sign.

因爲內部人士強有力地控制了董事會，所以一些企業管理的專家想要弄清對於董事會的獨立性和功用而言，這（阿里的這種特殊的結構）意味着什麼。比如，哈佛法學院的盧錫安·貝恰克就在近期紐約時報撰文詳列了他關注的重點。雖然這種風險沒能阻止人們對阿里股票的追捧，但一些投資人已經將其視作危險的信號。

Less worrisome is the comment in Ma's letter to shareholders that Alibaba "willput 'customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.'” Plentyof other business leaders haveused similar phrasing,and what he appears to mean is that he intends to focus on the long termrather than give in to short-term whims of shareholders that might arise. Without offering something that's first and foremost valuable to customers, and ensuring the company has happy, talented and focusedemployees to support that work, "we could not possibly have satisfied shareholders," Ma writes.

相對不那麼讓人擔心的是馬雲在給股東們的公開信中所表述的“阿里巴巴會把消費者放在第一位，員工第二，股東第三”。其他很多的商業領袖也會使用類似的措辭，而且似乎馬雲的言外之意是他想要注重長遠利益而不是給未來的股東們短期的小惠。沒有要給顧客有價值的商品和服務，也沒有保證公司擁有待遇滿意、有才幹、目標明確的僱員來完成那樣的工作，馬雲只是簡單（在信中）說道：“我們可能無法讓股東滿意。”

4. The gender diversity of its management team is better than that ofsome big companies in Silicon Valley. But on the board,it's lacking.

阿里巴巴管理團隊的性別多樣化程度要高於硅谷的一些大公司；但在董事會，卻性別單一。

Nine of the 30 members of the AlibabaPartnership, or nearly 30 percent, are women. And three of the 12 executives itlists on its Web site as leaders of the companyare as well. That's higher thanthe 21 percent of Google's leaders who are women and the21 percent at Twitter. (The28 percent at eBay and Apple are more in line.) AlibabaGroup's chief financial officer, head of human resources, and "chief customer officer" are all women.

阿里巴巴30位合夥人中有9位是女性，也就是30%的比例。另外，在阿里網站公佈的其公司領導名單中，12位執行官有3位也是女性，這高於只有21%的谷歌女性領導比例，也高於同樣只有21%的推特（Ebay是28%，蘋果也差不多）。阿里集團的首席財政官、人力資源總監、首席客戶服務官都是女人。

Yet the gender makeup of its boardleaves something to be desired. The lone female on the nine-member board is Yahoo's chief development officer, Jacqueline Reses — and she is expected to step down once the IPO is completed.

然而，阿里董事會的性別構成卻還有待改進。9位董事中只有一位女性傑奎琳·雷瑟斯，她是雅虎的首席發展官，但當阿里的IPO完成，她就會從董事的位置上退下來。

5. The annual shareholder letter won't always come fromMa, or the CEO.

阿里巴巴的年度股東信並不總是來自馬雲，或者是其CEO

That may sound like a trivial thing, butit's not. Annual shareholder letters from big-namecompanies, such as Warren Buffett's at Berkshire Hath away or the one written by Amazon's Jeff Bezos (who also owns the Washingt on Post), are widely studied byinvestors. They offer shareholders a sense of the big-picture strategy,some insights on how management thinks, and the key priorities for the Ma has written that, after the IPO, his "partners in the Alibaba Partnership will take turns writing the annual letter." That's a veryunusual practice — just like plenty of other things about this huge companythat's about to go public.

這最後一點聽起來有點微不足道，但事實並不是這樣。 知名公司的年度股東信，比如伯克希爾·哈撒韋公司的沃倫巴菲特或者是亞馬遜的傑夫·貝佐斯（他還收購了華生頓郵報）所寫的年度股東信都被投資者廣泛地研究。這些股東信給股東以大戰略的願景、一些對公司管理的見解以及公司的當務之急。馬雲寫了這第一封，但在IPO之後，將有他的阿里合夥人們輪流來寫年度股東信。這是一種不尋常的做法————就像這家即將上市的大公司的很多其他新鮮事一樣。