Chinese firm Fangda Partners' longtime leader Jonathan Zhou is leaving the firm to join Alibaba-affiliated Ant Financial Services Group as general counsel.

Zhou will oversee the legal and compliance functions for Ant Financial, which operates Alipay, one of the most popular online payment services in China. He will report to Leiming Chen, the company's senior vice president in charge of legal, compliance and anti-money laundering matters.

Zhou, who currently chairs Fangda's management committee, will leave the firm once the committee's term ends and after helping with the transition of a new management team. In 1994, Zhou co-founded Fangda with a group of young lawyers in Shanghai and has since led the firm's growth from a local boutique firm to one of the most premium mainland Chinese law firms, competing directly in many aspects with global legal giants.

Under his leadership, Fangda shaped its elite talent strategy, hiring not only from top law schools in China and overseas but also from top tier international law firms, including partners. Most notably in recent years, it recruited a Hong Kong capital markets team from Shearman & Sterling led by partner Colin Law. The firm has also recently hired from Kirkland & Ellis, Morrison & Foerster and Linklaters.

During his tenure, Fangda, which is headquartered in Shanghai, established offices in Shenzhen, Beijing, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. The firm reported $219.4 million in 2018 revenue, up 30% from the year before, making it the ninth highest-grossing law firm in China that year.

Fangda is also one of the most profitable Chinese law firms. In 2018, with 75 equity partners, the firm had $1.17 million in profit per equity partner, second only to MWE China Law Offices.

Zhou, a corporate lawyer, led Fangda to advise on many of the early private equity investments in China. Over time, the firm became known for cross-border transactions as well as for its dispute resolution practices, establishing a strong reputation in antitrust, international arbitration, patent litigation and enforcement and investigations.

Alibaba is one of the firm's better known longtime clients. Fangda advised on the company's 2014 listing on the New York Stock Exchange and last year's secondary listing in Hong Kong, and on numerous acquisitions and investments. Fangda also represented Ant Financial in its most recent $14 billion funding round.

In a press release, managing partner Gao Yang said the firm will announce a new management team soon and that "under the leadership … the firm will continue its success and grow even stronger."

As Zhou transitions out of the firm, Fangda will become the latest Chinese law firms having to tackle the challenge of leadership succession. In a letter to his partners and colleagues announcing his impending departure, Zhou conceded that the firm's succession plans in management and leadership lags far behind those in practices and business, and that young partners weren't involved enough in management matters and the firm has been slow to change.

"Today, I hope changes begin with my departure," he wrote in the letter. "Our succession plans start when the new management team takes over from me."

Zhou is also the latest among the outside counsel to join Alibaba's affiliated companies. In 2016, Chen, Ant Financial's current general counsel, moved in-house with the fintech company from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, where he a partner. The company had also hired former Allen & Overy Shanghai partner Benjamin Bai as chief intellectual property counsel. In addition, former Simpson Thacher partner Shaolin Luo, who was also a former partner of Fangda, joined Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma's private equity firm YunFeng Capital as general counsel in 2018.

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