Alibaba Group announces new arm to handle finance

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, China's biggest e-commerce company, is setting up a new company to handle payments, micro-finance, guarantees and insurance in the latest of a series of structural changes at the company over the past two years. Lucy Peng, the chief executive officer of Alipay.com Co Ltd, Alibaba's online payment arm, will act as CEO of the new company. It's not known what part Alipay and Aliloan, its micro-lending arms, will play. In January, Alibaba restructured its seven business groups into 25 business units.

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