昨晚，在淘宝十周年晚会上，马云高歌两曲之后，正式宣布辞去阿里巴巴CEO，并将接力棒转交给陆兆禧。

　　对于马云“最后的演讲”，有网友质疑这是阿里在“作秀造神”。而部分分析人士上午在接受记者采访时则表示，马云的卸任对阿里未来的影响并不大。

　　在昨晚举行的淘宝10周年晚会上，身着七分裤和银光亮片衫、头戴晚礼帽的马云一亮相，就引来了现场阵阵掌声。

　　演唱完《我爱你中国》和《朋友》两首歌曲后，马云发表了其任上最后一次演讲：“今晚上12点以后我将不是CEO，从明天开始商业就是我的票友，我为自己从商14年深感骄傲！”随后，马云将接力棒转交给了与之有13年共事经历的陆兆禧。

　　据了解，马云辞去CEO职务后，将专职担任阿里巴巴集团董事局主席，主要负责董事局的战略决策、协助CEO做好组织文化和人才培养。

　　在卸任之前，马云还留下了一个“大礼包”：阿里宣布以2.94亿美元投资高德软件，占股28%。据易观最新数据显示，2013年一季度，高德以28.7%的市场占有率，位列中国本地版手机导航客户端榜首。

　　此次入股高德，被业内人士认为是阿里继续布局O2O市场的关键动作。借助高德的引擎和地图内容，结合本身的电子商务平台，将推进阿里集团线上揽客、线下交易的O2O交易方式。也就是说，未来有可能通过高德地图搜索到淘宝商家的实体店铺，进行线下交易，拓宽交易渠道。

　　网友： 大量转发相关视频和演讲稿

　　“马云生活去啦，他真的能闲下来吗？”从昨晚10点半开始，微博上的各种“大V”开始疯狂转发、评论马云卸任CEO的演讲稿和视频。

　　截至今日上午8点，相关微博转发量已超过657099条，荣升新浪微博十大热门话题。

　　记者注意到，有不少网友摘录了马云演讲稿中的精华，并将它们转发到微博上：“我能走到今天，是大家的信任，因为信任，所以简单！”“明天起生活将是我的工作！”“解决你不败、不老、不糊涂的唯一办法，相信年轻人”。

　　但对于今早有关马云卸任消息的大规模“刷屏”，也有不少网友质疑这是阿里的一场“公关秀”。

　　网友“元芳Lee”表示：“马总值得尊敬，不过这个视频出现的时间点太精确了，应该是PR设计好的。”而网友“草重六日”也表示：“阿里的PR别再造神了，低调行事吧。虽然我也很佩服马云。”

　　分析：平稳过渡 阿里将延续“马云”精神

　　对于马云的卸任，不少业内人士担心这会对阿里未来整体上市产生影响。对此，中信建投分析师刘杨上午表示影响不大。

　　刘杨认为，马云对于阿里就如同乔布斯对于苹果，都是企业的旗帜和精神支柱。不过和乔布斯的突然离世不同，马云的卸任更多的是平稳过渡，“马云只是交出了CEO职务，对阿里未来的战略决策仍会负责。”

　　除了入股高德外，马云在卸任前对阿里的内部架构也重新进行了调整，按平台、数据、金融三大方向，调整为25个事业部，整合金融业务，筹建阿里小微金融服务集团。当时就有业内人士称，马云留给陆兆禧的，除了移动互联网布局外，还有一个构架清晰的阿里巴巴。

　　刘杨表示，鉴于上述原因，即使进入“后马云时代”，阿里仍然会延续“马云”精神，而此前计划多年的整体上市，也会按照计划进行，不会因为马云的卸任，出现太多偏差。文/记者 王思思 王伶玲

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-09/when-ceos-return-a-cautionary-tale

When CEOs Return: A Cautionary Tale   （April 09, 2013）

When companies hunting for a new chief have a prior CEO on the board, they reinstate the former executive one-quarter of the time, according to a 2007 study by researchers at Ohio State University. That’s what J.C. Penney (JCP) did yesterday, sliding Myron Ullman back into the C-suite after the ouster of Ron Johnson.

Whatever Pete Townshend may have thought, tapping an old boss is not the worst option for a board fighting to save a company. At the very least, a former chief knows the battlefield and most of the top lieutenants.

At first, markets tend to react negatively to the rehire announcement, the study said. But over time, firms that go back to the well don’t tend to perform any worse than companies that hire a fresh face—at least on average. In other words, the future of J.C. Penney may be written, regardless of who has the reins.

Here’s a look at five returning CEOs and how they fared in their second tour of duty.

Howard Schultz
Starbucks (SBUX)
First tour: November 1985 to June 2000
Second tour: January 2008 to present
Change in stock price during second tour: +218%

When Schultz left Starbucks in 2000, the company was buzzing. When he returned, it was grappling with a tightening economy and an onslaught of competition from Dunkin’ Donuts (DNKN) and McDonald’s (MCD). Schultz the sequel has presided over a string of strategic successes, including VIA instant packets, a lighter Blonde brew, and a major push into China and India.

Charles R. Schwab
Charles Schwab (SCHW)
First tour: January 1986 to January 1998
Second tour: July 2004 to October 2008
Change in stock price during second tour: +194%

There’s a reason his name’s on the door. Schwab, a Stanford MBA, has a talent for running the company and a knack for timing his C-suite stays with bull markets. As chairman, Schwab presided over the firing of David Pottruck in 2004. Pottruck had quadrupled client assets, but Schwab revenue plummeted after the tech bubble burst and he butted heads with the board over strategy.

Schwab’s second turn at the wheel was marked by massive results. He ducked out before the financial storm at the end of 2008, a year the firm posted a 24 percent profit margin.

William Stavropoulos
Dow Chemical (DOW)
First tour: November 1995 to November 2000
Second tour: December 2002 to November 2004
Change in stock price during second tour: +66%

Stavropoulos was a lifer, joining Dow as a research chemist in 1967. He was reinstated to the C-suite to succeed Michael Parker, another career Dow employee who put up eight quarters of disappointing numbers.

With the tailwind of a strengthening economy, Stavropoulos’s second term was a resounding success. He pivoted the chemical giant to two years of hefty gains in revenue and profit.

Jeffrey Citron
Vonage Holdings (VG)
First tour: January 2001 to February 2006
Second tour: April 2007 to July 2008
Change in stock price during second tour: -51%

Citron, the founder of Vonage, was never far from the CEO seat. He still held a 30 percent stake in the company when he took the reins again in 2007. At the time, Vonage was locked in a patent battle with Verizon Communications (VZ) and Sprint (S), while still dealing with the fallout of its disastrous IPO.

Citron settled the lawsuits and stabilized the company, though his replacement, Marc Lefar, has been more successful in pleasing shareholders.

Paul Allaire
Xerox (XRX)
First tour: January 1991 to April 1999
Second tour: May 2000 to August 2001
Change in stock price during second tour: -64%

Allaire, who started working at Xerox as a financial analyst in 1966, famously helped the company win back market share from Japanese competitors in his first term as chief, though his tenure was marred by an accounting scandal.

When his successor, Richard Thoman, was canned, Allaire came out of retirement to rejoin a turbulent company struggling with a botched sales-force reorganization. Allaire’s second tour was marked by a stock market swoon, but he steadied the ship a bit.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=413

CEO Encores: When Leaders Return to Bail Out Their Companies

Published: August 15, 2001 in Knowledge@Wharton

Steve Jobs at Apple, Paul Allaire at Xerox, Henry Schacht at Lucent Technologies, Lawrence Bossidy at Honeywell International, Kenneth Lay at Enron and Ted Waitt at Gateway are high-profile CEOs. But they have more in common than that.

They are CEOs who, for one reason or another, left the top spots at their companies only to return to take command later when their companies ran into difficult times. Is bringing back a CEO in such circumstances a good idea? Or do companies and their boards of directors assume risks when they look to the past for saviors?

Wharton faculty members and the head of a human resources consulting firm say that decisions to bring back CEOs are not common; companies are not prone to courting the kind of instability that comes with playing musical chairs in the executive suite. Asking a chief executive for an encore performance does, however, signal that a company is in dire straits and that awarding the lead role to a proven winner may be the best way to handle the crisis.

"I don’t think it’s common at all," Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr., vice dean and director of Wharton’s Aresty Institute of Executive Education, says of rehiring a CEO. "In every single case I’ve seen, the companies have been in deep trouble - not trivial trouble but life-threatening trouble."

"I’m always reluctant to second-guess someone on a decision of this magnitude, but it looks like the boards made good moves in most of these cases," says management professor Michael Useem, director of Wharton’s Center for Leadership and Change Management.

Paul Allaire became chief executive of Xerox in 1990, but brought in an outsider, Rick Thoman, as CEO in 1999. After 13 months, Thoman was shown the door and Allaire took over once more. Henry Schacht successfully led Lucent from 1995 to 1997 after AT&T spun off the maker of telecommunications equipment. Richard McGinn replaced him. But McGinn stepped down after a series of profit warnings and revelations of myriad problems at the company in 2000, and Schacht was brought back.

Steve Jobs co-founded Apply in 1976 but was ousted by John Sculley in a power struggle in 1985. Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, introducing new lines of computers and leading Apple back to profitability. In January 2000, Ted Waitt relinquished his CEO title to president Jeff Weitzen to spend time in semi-retirement. But a year later Waitt replaced Weitzen as CEO when Gateway was facing a sharp slowdown in personal computer sales.

Some of these leaders gave up their positions voluntarily, others under pressure. But at least as far as the underlying health of the companies is concerned, these cases display more similarities than differences.

The most recent rehirings of well-known CEOs took place at Honeywell International (formerly Allied Signal) and Enron Corp. Lawrence Bossidy served as head of Allied Signal from 1991 to 1999. One year after overseeing the acquisition by Allied Signal of Honeywell - the newly combined company changed its name to Honeywell International - Bossidy retired.

But Bossidy rejoined Honeywell International in July - replacing Michael Bonsignore - after the European Commission thwarted General Electric’s attempted takeover of Honeywell. Honeywell, too, has been struggling. Its net income fell by more than 90% in the second quarter. Bossidy is expected to try to strengthen the industrial giant’s performance before trying to find another buyer for it.

At Enron, chairman Kenneth Lay agreed on Aug. 14 to assume the post of president and CEO, a position he held for 15 years before the job was turned over to Jeff Skilling earlier this year. Although Skilling had originally been recruited by Lay, news reports suggest that recent setbacks experienced by the huge energy provider led to Skillings’ abrupt decision to leave the company.

"I think companies under stress are looking for a couple of things to happen," says David Russo, CEO of Empliant Inc., an HR consulting firm in Raleigh, N.C., and executive vice president at large of the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va.

"They want to bring someone into the organization with a track record that says they are able to carry out implementable tactics [that lead to success]. But because that person’s history with that organization has been visionary, companies also want someone whom people inside and outside the organization can get psyched up about. Internal and external imagery is a factor, and I think it makes a lot of sense to do that in a company that’s struggling."

Useem says bringing back a former CEO "looks a little bit odd because the action confirms that the board made a mistake in picking the person that the board itself picked - like Richard McGinn at Lucent. On the other hand, companies make mistakes all the time. It’s in the nature of taking risk. So replacing an under-performing CEO is a mark against the board. But companies are always making mistakes and correcting them quickly, and that’s good."

However, Peter Cappelli, director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources, says rehiring a CEO may signal more than just a hiring mistake. "First, it reflects frustration on the part of the directors," Cappelli says. "Second, it reflects the lack of any clear idea about what should be done [to turn the company around] and how it ought to be done." If the directors knew exactly what was needed they could find the right person for the job, Capelli adds. "But they don’t know what needs to be done and they have no confidence that they can find someone who can do it."

"It’s not that the board is incompetent," Cappelli says. "The problem is that nobody else knows, either."

Rehiring a CEO would probably sit well with employees, especially if the executive was successful before. But Useem says it is essential to communicate with workers to let them know what is going on. "Aggressive internal communications is really important. A standard principle in corporate communications is if you’re in a position of knowing something at the top of the company and don’t communicate it, employees will make up rumors to fill the void. If you don’t explain, for example, why Henry Schacht was brought back in, that can get top management into trouble. It can lower morale."

Having a former CEO returning for an encore may also make it more difficult for a company to recruit the next CEO. "I think it makes it tougher for someone to come in and follow the legend a second time," says Russo. "It’s like following [former Green Bay Packers’ Coach] Vince Lombardi or Jack Welch." It would be best if the ego of the subsequent CEO could take a back seat to the good of the company. "What it takes is a humble person," says Russo. "That means a big person who doesn’t have to come in and immediately put his or her brand on the company but can nurture it."

Useem says qualified candidates may also be reluctant to take the job if the former CEO had extraordinary influence with the company before he was brought back and if he will continue to be influential in the future. Allaire, for instance, remained on Xerox’s board after he gave up the CEO spot the first time around. Says Useem: "A new person may be reluctant to come in if the former CEO is formally close by."

[Anne Mulcahy replaced Allaire as CEO on Aug. 1, when she assumed her new duties as president and chief executive of Xerox, where she had been president and chief operating officer. Allaire will continue as chairman until his retirement at the end of the year. In a statement on July 26, Allaire said, "This leadership transition is consistent with the board’s plans developed last year when I returned as CEO and Anne was named president and COO."]

Whether a returning CEO will succeed depends on many factors. "Is the business still a viable business? Russo asks. "Does it have the right players in the organization to do the turnaround? And, just as important, has the ship of opportunity sailed for any number of different reasons? Or is it just too late?"