BEIJING, January  27 (TMTPOST)— The world’s most valuable startup is further moving away from clout of the nine-year founder-CEO era as a founder is loosening his grip on it.

Source: Visual China

Zhang Yiming, a co-founder and former CEO of ByteDance Ltd., was no more legal representatives of many affiliates of the TikTok parent company including Beijing ByteDance Network Technology Co., Ltd, Beijing Zitiao Network Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Zitiao Network Network Technology Co. Ltd., Miyou Network Technology (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and Beijing Shibei Technology Co., Ltd., according to Tianyancha, an online database of Chinese businesses. The retreat was followed by Zhang’s resigning from three affiliates based in Tianjing, one of China’s municipalities under the central government.

Zhang’s exit as legal representatives was seemed as a normal transition of the management since Liang Rubo, another cofounder and the new CEO, has taken the overall responsibility of the whole company’s development, people closer to ByteDance told The Beijing News, the official newspaper of Beijing municipal government. The person also revealed Zhang hasn’t participated in his company’s bimonthly meetings or joined in daily management any more.

The transition came as ByteDance experienced reorganizations amid the tightening regulatory environment in its home market after Zhang, a longtime leader’s departure from the board.

In last May, Zhang Yiming suddenly announced to step down as CEO. "I decided to quit and leave daily management to focus on those key works in the long run such as long-term strategies, corporate culture and social responsibilities”, the co-founder wrote in his resignation letter. He showed desire for learning and systemic thinking, studying new things and making experiments and experience on them, so as to" create more possibilities for the company in a period of ten years”. In November, about six months later, Liang Rubo, Zhang’s successor and the new board chairman, started his major overhaul and divided businesses into six units, one of which consists of TikTok’s Chinese sister Douyin, Toutiao, the most popular news app in China, Xigua, a video-streaming app, the online encyclopedia arm Baike, the search engine Search and vertical service businesses in domestic market.

Earlier this month, ByteDance was reported to dissolve its strategic investment team and reassign about a hundred employees to other positions. The decision was made to reduce investment in areas that have low compatibility to its businesses, and members of the strategic investment team will be reallocated to different business lines to enhance the strategy unit’s coordination with other business units, an insider told TMTPost.

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