SoftBank Group Corp said that Alibaba’s co-founder Jack Ma will resign from its board. The departure of Ma, who retired as Alibaba’s executive chairman in September, comes as he plans for more philanthropic works than business.

SoftBank founder and chairman Masayoshi Son's bet on Ma's startup in 2000 became known as one of the most successful deals in history. Alibaba went on to become one of the world's largest companies with a market capitalization of $546 billion. SoftBank still holds about 25% of the company. Ma, who joined SoftBank's board in 2007, retired from Alibaba last year. SoftBank said the decision to leave its board was his request.

SoftBank will propose three new appointments to the board, including group Chief Financial Officer Yoshimoto Goto, at its upcoming annual general meeting on June 25. The number of board members will expand to 13. SoftBank will also propose the election of Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of chip design software firm Cadence Design Systems who is also chairman of venture capital firm Walden International, and Yuko Kawamoto, a professor at Waseda Business School as outside directors. Kawamoto will become its only female board member.

That meets a demand from activist investor Elliott Management, which has pressed SoftBank to improve board diversity, and also wants a new subcommittee to oversee the investment process at the $100 billion Vision Fund. The board is largely comprised of SoftBank insiders and confidants. It includes Yasir al-Rumayyan, who heads the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund that is the Vision Fund’s biggest outside backer.

Ma’s exit follows the departure of Tadashi Yanai, founder and CEO of Uniqlo parent Fast Retailing, who resigned from the board late last year to focus on his fashion business. Separately, SoftBank said the board had approved a second 500 billion yen ($4.7 billion) tranche of share purchases, part of a 2.5 trillion-yen buyback programme announced in March to prop up the group’s share price as its tech bets flounder. SoftBank has bought back more than 250 billion yen of its shares at the end of April. It has pledged to sell down or monetise $41 billion of assets to raise cash, with its stake in Alibaba - the portfolio’s most valuable asset - seen as a likely target. SoftBank's stakes in Alibaba and T-Mobile alone are worth more than $150 billion -- compared with Softbank's own market capitalization of 9.5 trillion yen ($89 billion). Son is SoftBank's largest investor with a stake of around 27%.

Source- Reuters