November 2, 2021

ByteDance to reorganise, Singaporean CFO Chew steps down to focus on TikTok

By ellen

BEIJING (REUTERS) – TikTok chief executive officer Chew Shou Zi will step down as its parent ByteDance’s chief financial officer (CFO) to focus on running the short video business full time, according to an internal memo the company shared with Reuters.

The move comes after ByteDance shelved its plan to go public in April and said it had no imminent plans  for an initial public offering (IPO). It had previously planned for a Hong Kong or New York listing.

Mr Chew,  who is Singaporean, joined ByteDance as CFO in March and was appointed as TikTok CEO in May. 

He previously  spent several years as CFO and international business president of Xiaomi Corp, where he took the gadget maker public in one of the largest-ever Chinese tech listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Bytedance also plans a major reorganisation to create six business units,  CEO Liang Rubo said in the memo sent to staff. The six units are TikTok, Douyin, work collaboration unit Lark, business services unit BytePlus, gaming unit Nuverse and education tech unit Dali.

Douyin is the Chinese version of TikTok.