Tung Chee-hwa set to join Alibaba board

Tung Chee-hwa, the first chief executive of Hong Kong, will join the board of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group as an independent director soon after its initial public offering in New York, according to the company's updated US regulatory filing.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba has also named for the first time the senior partners who will help executive chairman and co-founder Jack Ma Yun set the direction for the company, which has been on a huge investment spree since last year.

Its listing is tipped to be the biggest-ever by an internet company, surpassing that of social network leader Facebook's US$16 billion listing in 2012. It is not known which stock exchange, the NYSE or Nasdaq, Alibaba will list on.

Yahoo co-founder and former chief executive Jerry Yang and J. Michael Evans, who retired as vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs in December, will also serve as independent directors. Evans is also a former Goldman Sachs Asia chief who helped develop the US bank's China business.

Alibaba credited Tung's "strategic vision, his deep experience and perspective as a business and government leader, and his long history and proven track record of building and strengthening relationships between China and the United States" as reason for the appointment to its board.

Tung served as the city's chief executive after the handover from July 1, 1997 to March 12, 2005, mainly during the tenure of Jiang Zemin as president. Jiang's grandson, Alvin Jiang Zhicheng, is a founding partner of Boyu Capital, a mainland-focused investment firm that owns a stake in Alibaba.

Tung is currently the vice-chairman of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the founding chairman of the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Hong Kong that promotes understanding between China and the US.