Chinese on-demand delivery giant Meituan has temporarily closed its Beijing community group-buying service, with speculation that it could be related to the city’s recent Covid-19 cases, reports Caixin. “From April 26, the pickup station of your choice will halt services temporarily, to ensure optimal user experience,” Meituan said in a notification published Monday both on its app and WeChat mini program.

One source at Meituan, who asked not to be named, told Caixin that that the company decided several months ago to shutter group-buying operations in unprofitable cities. The source said that Meituan’s Beijing operations have been unprofitable due to high costs.

But another Meituan source said it had ended the service not due to poor profitability, but because of a desire to focus on instant grocery deliveries, in which its army of gig workers deliver goods to buyers’ doors. Meituan’s group-buying, on the other hand, consists of third-party merchants-operated delivery and customers’ picking up their purchases themselves.

Daniel Zhang Yong, the chairman and chief executive of Alibaba Group, has stepped down from his role as the legal representative behind the corporate entities that control Taobao Marketplace and Tmall, reports the South China Morning Post.

Trudy Dai Shan, one of Alibaba’s founding members in 1999 and a company partner, has succeeded Zhang as legal representative at both Taobao Software Co and Zhejiang Tmall Technology Co, where she also serves as chairwoman and general manager, according to data from Chinese corporate registry tracking firm Tianyancha.

Dai, who has worked across multiple business segments in Alibaba, last December was appointed to head Alibaba’s China digital commerce unit, which combines the company’s consumer-facing and wholesale online marketplaces. In January, she started her first major initiative in that role by reorganising the back-end operations of Taobao and Tmall.

Chinese tech giant ByteDance, parent company of TikTok, announced a collaboration with Konka Group, an electronics company based in the southern tech hub of Shenzhen, which has unveiled a new set of smart TV products powered by ByteDance’s MEyou operating system, reports the South China Morning Post. Co-developed with Konka, MEyou OS marks ByteDance’s initial foray into the market for large-screen operating software, offering a platform that has a more intuitive search function, supports gesture control and enables content from several devices to be shown simultaneously on a single TV.

For example, a family can watch a drama or sports program, while shopping online on the margin via split screen. One family member can even play a video game on the TV, while another watches yoga exercises.

MEyou OS is expected to help revive the relevance of large TV screens in an era when smartphones, tablets and personal computer screens have gained more attention because of people’s increased need to work and study from home as part of precautions against Covid-19, according to Zou Wei, director of ByteDance’s Smartisan OS unit.

Tian Huiyu, president of China Merchants Bank, is relinquishing their role after an almost nine-year tenure that brought the organization to the top of the country’s retail banking sector, reports Bloomberg. Tian, 56, was relieved from his current role and will be assigned to another unspecified post, effective immediately, the Shenzhen-based bank said in a statement Monday. Wang Liang, chief financial officer and board secretary of Merchants Bank, will assume Tian’s duty in the interim, according to the statement.

Shares of Merchants Bank slumped 7.4% in Shanghai on Monday, the most in nearly seven years, amid unverified social media reports that Tian was assisting a probe. The stock has lost 11% this year, making it the worst performer among publicly-traded banks on the mainland.

Tian didn’t join the board meeting held on Monday due to personal reasons, according to the statement.

Houston Huang, Wall Street bank JPMorgan Chase’s top securities executive in China, is taking a step back and will be replaced by his deputy as the bank tries to deal with slowing growth in the China economy, reports Caixin. Huang will hand over the role of chief executive officer of JPMorgan Securities (China) to Lu Fang, a former official at China’s securities regulator. Huang will remain head of mainland China investment banking to dedicate more time to important clients in the region.

Lu, who joined the bank in 2019, has also worked at Credit Suisse Founder Securities and spent 13 years at the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). Subject to regulatory filings the change will become effective April 15.

“Her exceptional market knowledge and experience will be critical in the continued growth” of the securities unit, said the bank’s China CEO Mark Leung and Paul Uren, the head of investment banking for Asia Pacific, in the memo.