Alibaba has Reduced the Size of its Deals Team

After Beijing's sweeping regulatory crackdown slowed the Chinese e-commerce behemoth's dealmaking pace, Alibaba Group is cutting more than a third of its in-house deals team, according to four people with knowledge of the matter.

According to two of the people, Alibaba plans to reduce its strategic investment team of more than 110 people, primarily based in Mainland China, to around 70, and the company has already informed the majority of staffers of their redundancy.

The job cuts primarily affect mid-level and senior employees on the mainland, according to the two people, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the media. They also stated that the company's deals team has personnel in Hong Kong.

According to Reuters, Alibaba and its main rival Tencent planned to cut tens of thousands of jobs this year in one of their largest layoff rounds as the crackdown and China's COVID-19 curbs stifled growth.

In response to regulatory crackdowns in China, TikTok owner ByteDance also shrunk its investment team and was dissolving a sub-group focused on financial returns, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters in January.