New Oriental makes top livestreamer a senior partner in online commerce unit
East Buy will feature a livestream session on Monday evening between Chairman and Chief Executive Yu Minhong, and Dong Yuhui who was recently made senior partner.
New Oriental made its top livestreamer Dong Yuhui a senior partner at its online commerce unit on Monday after an improper management dispute that led to the ousting of Chief Executive Sun Dongxu over the weekend.
Dong was also made vice president of New Oriental's cultural and tourism unit and assistant of Chairman Yu Minhong's culture-related business.
In a livestreaming session on Monday evening, it announced new business operation structure which will further enhance corporate profitability and allow individuals to have a bigger play to unleash further potentials.
During the livestreaming on Douyin, Yu and Dong attracted more than 3 million viewers.
Dong Yuhui's independent studio will take about one month for preparation while his sales performance will not be major business evaluation metric.
"This will create more value for East Buy and New Oriental's shareholders... as for the improper management issues, it certainly violates company's mission to put customer value first," said Yu.
Monday morning's announcement already pushed up East Buy's share prices as it surged 21.9 percent in the Hong Kong bourse.
The online controversy emerged in early December when East Buy's social media content team irritated regular followers, leading to a boycott and stock price drop.
Online viewers welcome the return of Dong Yuhui, a former English tutor whose down-to-earth style helped East Buy's livestream clips go viral last year.
The controversy started over whether the entire editorial team or Dong alone should take credit for many acclaimed promotional materials and phrasing, and further escalated to whether East Buy was giving fair recognition and payment to Dong for his contribution.
During a one-and-a-half hour long talk with Yu livestreamed on Saturday, Dong said he was staying with the company and enjoyed what he does at the moment, while Yu addressed internal management inadequacies and added that Sun's exit was unrelated to the controversy.
Yu admitted that the e-commerce unit had not been truly fair in nurturing Dong's further development and had restricted his potential to play a bigger role in promoting agricultural products and cultural heritage.
East Buy's stock exchange filing over the weekend said the board of directors removed Sun from the post of executive president and executive director, but he remains a non-executive director at the firm.
