BEIJING (REUTERS) – TikTok chief executive officer Chew Shou Zi will step down as its parent ByteDance’s chief financial officer (CFO) to focus on running the short video platform full time, according to an internal memo the company shared with Reuters.
The memo, which was sent by ByteDance co-founder Liang Rubo to staff on Tuesday (Nov 2), also outlined a major reshuffle at the Beijing-based company to create six business units (BUs).
This is the biggest organisational change since ByteDance co-founder Zhang Yiming said in May he would step down as CEO.
Mr Zhang remains chairman and has more than 50 per cent of voting rights. Mr Liang will officially take over from Mr Zhang as CEO in December.
Mr Chew’s shift comes after ByteDance said in April that it did not have any imminent plans for an initial public offering (IPO). It had been looking at a Hong Kong or New York listing, sources previously told Reuters.
One of the world’s largest private companies, ByteDance had a valuation of about US$300 billion (S$404.2 billion) in recent trades.
It recently opened a huge new office in Singapore’s One Raffles Quay office tower, and reportedly embarked on a hiring spree in the Republic earlier this year, advertising for hundreds of engineers and senior management positions for TikTok and other business units.
Mr Chew, who is Singaporean, joined ByteDance as CFO in March and was appointed as TikTok CEO in May. He previously spent several years as CFO and international business president of Xiaomi Corp, where he took the gadget maker public in one of the largest-ever Chinese tech listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Mr Liang did not elaborate on replacement plans for the CFO role, but a person familiar with the matter said the company was not rushing to seek candidates to fill the position.
ByteDance will also be reorganised into six units – TikTok and its Chinese version Douyin, work collaboration unit Lark, business services unit BytePlus, gaming unit Nuverse, and education tech unit Dali Education, Mr Liang said in the memo.
This will help ensure “business lines and teams that work closely together are grouped as BUs”, he added.
The TikTok unit will support operations of the short video app and its expansion into areas such as global e-commerce.
ByteDance’s Chinese products, including Douyin, news aggregator Toutiao, video-streaming platform Xigua, will be folded into the Douyin unit, which will take over all “information and service” operations in the Chinese market.
The bulk of ByteDance revenue, totalling US$34.3 billion in 2020, was generated in China, sources have said.
Mr Liang also said that Dali, which has undergone lay-offs and product closures after China issued rules barring curriculum-based tutoring for profit, would provide services for education stakeholders such as artificial intelligence-powered learning, education for adults and smart hardware.