(Yicai) March 21 -- Daniel Zhang, former chairman of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, has joined Firstred Capital, an investment company focusing on mergers and acquisitions, as a managing partner.

Zhang will leverage his considerable skills and resources in business management and operations as well as the capital market to build FirstRed into a future-oriented M&A investment fund, the Beijing-based company said today.

Upon his departure in September last year, Alibaba promised 52-year-old Zhang USD1 billion to help him set up and manage a future-oriented tech fund.

Zhang will work alongside founder Liu Xiaodan, who used to be chairwoman of brokerage Huatai United Securities and who helped its parent firm Huatai Securities acquire US wealth management firm AssetMark Financial Holdings in 2016.

Zhang joined Hangzhou-based Alibaba as chief financial officer in 2007 and was promoted to chief executive officer in 2015. Four years later he succeeded founder Jack Ma as chairman. When Alibaba spun off six business units into separate entities in March last year, Zhang was appointed chairman and CEO of the Cloud Intelligence Group.

After he left, Zhang was replaced by founding member Joseph Tsai as chairman and another co-founder Wu Yongming as CEO. Wu also took Zhang’s place at the Cloud Intelligence Group.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor