The retirement of Mary Ma Xuezheng, one of the mainland's highest-profile businesswomen, as a senior vice-president and chief financial officer of Lenovo Group effectively ends a 17-year career with the world's third-largest computer manufacturer.
The award-winning executive, who retired for personal reasons, will assume a non-executive advisory role as Lenovo vice-chairman. She will advise management on global strategy, strategic investments and finance-related issues and projects.
Ms Ma, 54, will be succeeded by Wong Wai-ming, who relinquished the chairmanship of Lenovo's audit committee for the posts. A former investment banker, he is also the chief executive of sourcing and logistics group Roly International Holdings.
Ms Ma described her decision to quit her daily role at Lenovo as 'difficult', while chairman Yang Yuanqing and chief executive William Amelio said her legacy would linger.
'Mary leaves us with a tremendous legacy,' Mr Yang said. 'For 17 years, she has made countless contributions to Lenovo's success and played an important role in our transformation into one of the world's largest personal computer makers.'
Ms Ma, a 1976 arts graduate from Capital Normal University in Beijing, joined Lenovo in 1990. She joined the board seven years later and became chief financial officer in 2000.
Her achievements have been recognised in numerous awards such as the best chief financial officer from FinanceAsia and she had been picked as one of the world's top 100 businesswomen by Forbes and Fortune.