Alibaba Pictures Group, the movie arm of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, has dismissed its executive director Patrick Liu Chunning, who has been in police detention since July.
Liu was arrested by China’s Public Security Bureau, apparently in connection with bribery allegations relating to matters during his employment at Tencent Technology, before he joined Alibaba.
Prior to his arrest Liu held positions straddling both Alibaba and Alibaba Pictures as VP of Alibaba Group and president of Alibaba’s digital and entertainment business group. At Alibaba Pictures he was one of three executive directors and a member of the executive committee.
"The company is unable to contact Mr. Liu until the date of this announcement, as Mr. Liu has failed to report his duties as director to the company and failed to attend any board meetings and general meetings of the company for a consecutive period of more than six months since June 11, 2015 without special leave of absence from the board,” Alibaba Pictures said in a filing.
"The board also considers that the removal of Mr. Liu from his directorship with the company will not have any adverse effect on the operations of the company,” it added.
In the same filing Alibaba Pictures said that it had appointed three new executive directors: Zhang Wei, the executive who previously headed Alibaba Pictures U.S. operations, who now becomes company president; Deng Kangming, COO; and Fan Luyuan, pioneer of Alibaba’s massively successful financial product Yu’e Bao.
The moves helped Alibaba Pictures shares rise against the trend of a falling market. While Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slipped more than 2%, Alibaba Pictures shares rose 1.04% on Monday to close at HK$1.94 apiece. At that price the company has a market capitalization of US$6.35 billion (HK$49.2 billion.)