The Ant Group has made a big adjustment.

Recently, Ant Group disclosed on its website that Ms. Yang Xiaolei and Ms. Shi Meilun were newly recruited as independent directors, with the proportion of independent directors rising to 50% and that of women accounting for more than 1/3. At the same time, Jiang Fang is no longer a non-executive director of Ant Group, and Hu Zulu, founder of Chunhua Capital, is no longer an independent director of Ant Group.

According to public information, Yang Xiaolei is now an independent director of Hengfeng Bank Co., Ltd., former lawyer of Citic Law firm under China International Trust and Investment Corporation (now Citic Group), partner of Jingtian Gongcheng Law firm, partner of Jindu Law firm.

Shi Meilun is currently the chairman of the Hong Kong exchanges and Clearing Limited and a former vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, in charge of listing and financing supervision. she is known as the "Iron Lady" of the securities industry. he also holds the post of Chairman of the Hong Kong Monetary Development Council, director and non-executive vice chairman of the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, China Telecom Corporation and independent non-executive director of Unilever and independent director of Baosteel.

After this adjustment, the Ant Group Board of Directors presents a "2-2-4" structure: two executive directors, Jing Xiandong (chairman) and Ni Xingjun; two non-executive directors / shareholder representative directors, Cai Chongxin and Cheng Li; and four independent directors. They are Hao Quan, Huang Yiping, Yang Xiaolei and Shi Meilun. Among them, the proportion of independent directors is 50%, Hao Quan, Yang Xiaolei and Shi Meilun are all women, and the proportion of female directors is more than 1%.

According to the analysis of people in the industry, independent directors are an important part of the modern corporate governance system, which is very important for the transparency of board governance and the effectiveness of performing their duties. At present, Ant's four independent directors include well-known economists, senior financial experts, senior legal experts and people with rich international regulatory experience, such a combination can ensure the professionalism of the board of directors; 50% of the members of the board of directors are independent directors, it is also conducive to the board of directors to perform their duties more independently, which are conducive to the long-term, healthy and stable development of Ant Group.

In addition, the increase in the proportion of female directors is also conducive to enhance the diversity of the board of directors and provide different views and perspectives for decision-making. Deloitte has reported that women now account for an average of 20 per cent of directors worldwide.

It is worth noting that Ant's board of directors also has two senior CTO, Ni Xingjun, chief technology officer of Ant Group, and Cheng Li, chief technology officer of BABA. From the technology concentration of the board of directors, we can see how much the company attaches importance to technology development.

It is reported that in order to meet the requirements of financial control supervision in the future, Ant Group has taken various measures to improve its corporate governance and play a key role in risk prevention. These measures include continuously strengthening the role of the board of directors, expanding the scope of performance of directors, and adding the board of directors conflict of interest committee, risk management and consumer rights protection committee, privacy protection and data security committee, etc. in the future, we will further increase the number of independent directors and gradually achieve more than half of the independent directors on the board of directors.

Shi Meilun, former vice chairman of the CSRC, joined, and Hu Zulu, founder of Chunhua Capital Group, no longer served.

The most remarkable thing about this major adjustment is that with the addition of Shi Meilun, former vice chairman of the CSRC, Shi Meilun has many titles: "Iron Lady", "Super Queen of migrant Workers" and "first Foreign Aid" of China Securities Regulatory Commission. In Hong Kong, some media called her the "Iron Lady" because when she was the Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission, she said nothing but the regulation of the securities market.

Shi Meilun, who was born in Shanghai in 1950 and grew up in Hong Kong, has served as an assistant director, senior director and executive director of the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission since 1991, and was promoted to vice chairman and chief operating officer of the Securities Regulatory Commission in 1998, the people's Daily reported. In the SFC, she is in charge of the corporate finance department and financial administration, and is quite authoritative. Her former boss, Shen Liantao, chairman of the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission, said of Shi Meilun as "an impartial and impartial and trustworthy approach, which is a model for SFC staff."

Hong Kong media have previously described her as "the most feared working queen of counterfeiting companies" because Sze Meilun pushed the Hong Kong Securities Regulatory Commission and the stock exchange to crack down on Hong Kong stock market black village in the 1990s. At one point, someone threatened her life, and she had no fear.

Shi Meilun has a deep relationship with mainland China's capital markets and served as vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004. Shi Meilun served as vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, making her the first person in the history of New China to serve as vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and a deputy ministerial official of the central government in the capacity of a professional from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

In an exclusive interview with CCTV in 2003, Shi Meilun recalled that Zhu Rongji, then premier of the State Council, sent her a job invitation through friends, which surprised her and flattered her. She feels that this is a very rare opportunity, and she is also very grateful to the leaders of the country for their trust in her, giving her such an important task and the opportunity to participate in reform and opening up.

After joining the China Securities Regulatory Commission in 2001, Shi Meilun strongly supported strong supervision, the dark scenes of the stock market were exposed one after another, and the Yi'an Science and Technology case, the China Science and Technology Entrepreneurship case, the Boshi Fund case, and the Yin Guangxia case were investigated. The regulatory concepts, policies and means of China's stock market are more and more in line with international norms. Statistics show that in the nine months since Shi Meilun took office, the CSRC has issued more than 40 laws, regulations and penalty decisions, covering listed companies, securities companies, securities audit institutions, securities consulting industry, and so on. Some media called Shi Meilun "the woman who set off a storm of supervision of China's stock market."

The year 2001 is also known as the year of China's stock market regulation. In September 2004, the State Council removed Shi Meilun from his post as vice chairman of the Securities Regulatory Commission. In the face of all kinds of speculation, Shi Meilun replied, "I have done everything I have to do, my job has been done, and I need to go home."

After stepping down as vice chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission in September 2004, Shi Meilun returned to Hong Kong and served as Chairman of the Hong Kong Monetary Development Council from January 2013 to July 2018. He is now the Chairman of the Hong Kong exchanges and Clearing Limited and a non-official member of the Executive Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative region.

In addition, Hu Zulu, founder of Chunhua Capital Group, is no longer an independent director of Ant Group. Prior to this, it was mired in a storm of "selling ant shares cheaply" in 2020, when a self-media article accused Hu Zulu, founder and chairman of Chunhua Capital, of "selling" ant shares at a low price. Chunhua Capital later said that the text circulated online contained a large amount of false information and constituted slander, and Hu Zulu also said that he could not comment publicly because several companies were about to go public.