Liu Chuanzhi will step down as chairman of Lenovo Holdings, the announcement is expected to be officially announced this week, according to LatePost.
Liu Chuanzhi is 75 years old. He founded Lenovo at the age of 40 (1984) and stepped down as chairman of the Lenovo group at 67 (2011).
He focused his energy on the business of the parent company, Lenovo Holdings, which controls PC company Lenovo Group, investment companies Junlian Capital, Hony Capital and Lenovo Star.
In addition, Lenovo Holdings is also promoting financial services, innovative consumption and services, agriculture and food.
Although he was born in Shanghai, Liu founded Lenovo in Beijing in 1984 - at the time, it was known as Legend Computers - with several of his fellow scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the leading think-tank for scientific endeavours on the mainland.
It was renamed as Lenovo is 2003 amid a media blitz and large-scale branding campaign. The word is a portmanteau of the first two letters of the parent company's name and the Latin ablative for "new".
The turning point came a decade ago with the acquisition of IBM's PC business, a landmark deal many analysts hail as a turning point for China's technology industry.
It showed a generation of aspiring entrepreneurs just what was possible, and served as a pioneer for other local tech players like Huawei and ZTE to emulate. Both have since adopted similar strategies and expanded aggressively overseas.
Liu Chuanzhi retired twice at Lenovo. In 2005, Yang Yuanqing, then president and CEO of Lenovo Group, officially replaced Liu Chuanzhi as chairman of Lenovo's board of directors.
However, four years later, due to the first loss in the history of Lenovo Group, Liu Chuanzhi returned to the rescue and became chairman of the board again. Lenovo Group turned losses into profits. After the crisis, Liu Chuanzhi retired in 2011.
In 2018, as Lenovo Group fell into the "5G voting gate" and "Lenovo is not a Chinese company" and other public opinions, Liu Chuanzhi stepped forward to support and personally published an article "Act, Sworn to Win Lenovo Honor Defense", Liu Chuanzhi once said, "As long as Lenovo does have danger. I will come out no matter how dangerous it is. "
In May of this year, Liu Chuanzhi talked about retirement in an interview with the "70, 70, 70, 70" column of NetEase, saying that retirement had been put on the agenda.
He said, "I want to know myself, and I want to be the honorary chairman of Lenovo Holdings. The company has a big strategic problem. I just know it. Just looking at the final results of young people, that's what an old man really should do. "
As of press time, Lenovo Holdings (SEHK: 03396) has a stock price of HK $ 16.7 per share and a market capitalization of HK $ 39.35 billion (approximately US $ 5,051 million).
