Charles Chao
Charles Guowei Chao 曹国伟 | |
|---|---|
| Born | |
| Nationality |  Chinese |
| Occupation(s) | CEO and President Sina Corp |
| Children | Two |
| Website | http://corp.sina.com.cn/eng/sina_mng_eng.htm |
Charles Chao or Guowei Chao (Chinese: 曹国伟; pinyin: Cáo Guówěi) is a Chinese businessman who is the CEO and President of Sina Corp.[2] Sina Corp is listed to trade on NASDAQ and now has around 63,918 employees worldwide. He has been with Sina since 1999, where he came in as vice president of finance.[3]
Education
Chao holds a Master of Professional Accounting degree from University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in Journalism from University of Oklahoma and a B.A. in Journalism from Fudan University in Shanghai.
Career
Chao joined Sina in 1999 when the company was facing difficulties in its attempts to get a listing on the NASDAQ. He overcame this challenge by establishing Sina as a VIE (Variable Interest Entity) company, which cleared the way for a successful listing in the US.
Since then, he has served as Sina’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and President in September 2005, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2006, and finally Chairman of the Board in this August. He is the first Chairman and CEO in company’s history. In 2009, he helped launch Sina Weibo, which has gone on to achieve great success.
Chao has also made use of the Company’s platform to support public welfare undertakings in China. Currently, Sina is one of the largest venues for making donations and emergency fundraising and is one of the first internet companies to set up a charity and public welfare platform. Now, Sina has established Yang Fan Public Welfare Fund, which will enable the company to participate more effectively in charity and public welfare causes.
Work history and other roles
Prior to joining Sina, Chao served as an audit manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP, an accounting firm. Prior to that, Chao was a news correspondent at Shanghai Media Group. Chao is currently the Chairman of Weibo Corporation, a leading media company, Co-Chairman of E-House, a real estate services company, and a director of NetDragon Websoft Inc., a company providing technology for online gaming and a director of Leju Holdings Ltd., an online-to-offline (O2O) real estate services provider in China.
Personal life
Marriages: Nanling Hu (m.1984-div.2014). Nanling is a junior staff working at Shanghai Media Group as a typist before getting married. Denise Schaefer (m.2014-div.2015). Denise Schaefer is a Peruvian glamour model. She and Chao became acquainted at a party in Hong Kong in 2014 and soon began to cooperate on a series of projects including HKBB(Beast and Beauty) boxing foundation and a model training school in Hong Kong. Chao is an amateur boxer since year 1985 and still practices it now. The couple also owned several art galleries in Hong Kong.
Personal crisis in Colombia: From 2012, Sina expanded its business to Latin American countries with a focus on low end manufacturing sector. In July 2015, one report from local media El Espectador cited a source working for Sina Colombia HTI-cable factory to show that many employees and workers work at SINA factories suffer from long working hours and electrical pollution. A very brutal "119 hours per week" working schedule for the workers and other concrete facts were revealed in that report. Chao was charged with violation of labor law but got an acquittal in October 2015, which caused a debate locally.
References
- ^ https://www.forbes.com/profile/charles-chao/
- ^ "Asia's 25 hottest people in business". CNN Money. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
- ^ "10 people you should know in China". Yahoo Finance. Retrieved 15 April 2013.
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