TENCENT Holdings Ltd. is putting about 10 percent of its managers on notice, as China’s largest gaming and social media company shakes up its workforce amid cooling growth and intensified competition, Bloomberg reported yesterday, quoting sources.

The company’s lowest-performing general managers will need to leave or be demoted, mainly because not much staff-pruning has occurred in the past, president Martin Lau told an internal meeting late last year, the report said.

The move comes as Tencent climbs out of one of its deepest troughs. Chinese regulators froze gaming approvals for nine months in 2018, walloping the company’s bread-and-butter business. The world’s eighth most valuable company is also fending off competition from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and newcomers like Bytedance Ltd. that’re siphoning user attention with short video apps. Tencent will report earnings later this week.

Tencent follows a slew of Chinese tech companies from JD.com Inc. to ride hailing Didi Chuxing that’re shaking up their ranks to tide them over tougher times. A report said last month JD.com Inc., one of China’s largest e-commerce sites, would lay off 10 percent of its senior executives this year. Ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing also said it would lay off 15 percent of its staff, with cuts coming mostly from non-core business units.

Funding has shrunk alongside a cooling in the nation’s economy. Chinese venture capital deals in the December quarter were down 25 percent and at their lowest since 2015, according to market research firm Preqin.

(SD-Agencies)