Alibaba

[CielOnTap]

Alibaba spins off payment unit without board's OK
Brian Womack, Bloomberg News

Friday, May 13, 2011
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. spun off its Alipay online-payment business to a different company without the knowledge or approval of its board or shareholders, Yahoo said Thursday.

Yahoo and Softbank Corp., both of which own stakes in Alibaba Group, didn't learn until March 31 of the ownership transfer, which happened in August, Yahoo said. Alibaba transferred ownership of Alipay to a company mostly owned by Jack Ma, chief executive officer of Alibaba Group, in order to comply with Chinese restrictions on foreign ownership of payment services, Yahoo said Wednesday.

The disclosure has weighed on shares of Yahoo amid concern that transferring ownership of the lucrative payment business would make its roughly 40 percent stake in Alibaba Group less valuable. Yahoo uses its stake to benefit from the rising Internet demand in China, where regulation of Web content has made it hard for U.S. companies to do business on their own.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/12/BU731JFJTU.DTL

Alibaba is a big player in Internet services, being the original or one of the original Chinese Internet portals to start up in China. The move to separate the money division from the portal business--likely a way for government to control foreign currency flow.

How was the split information conveyed if Yahoo and Softbank found out 6 months after the fact? Might be time to clear the board.

[manga2read]

Word on the Internet is that Yahoo is making itself open to an Alibaba buyout. Really??
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/business/yahoo-profit-falls-26-but-its-revenue-exceeds-expectations.html?scp=7&sq=alibaba&st=cse

How did the Alibaba company spinout that did not get shareholder approval play out? Are all parties resolved on the outcome?

[fishandchips]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/10/12/bloomberg_articlesLSTFAU0UQVI9.DTL

Run a search on SFgate.com's site for Alipay and see what results come up. Alibaba's got investors interested in buying it so that Alibaba can buy Yahoo. Getting complicated.

[pretzels]

Alibaba--plus Yahoo. Possible merger name idea comes to mind: YA!

[harmony]

Not so YA there, pretzels! Last month, Yahoo announced it was selling about half of its shareholdings back to Alibaba.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/21/153182602/business-news

Alibaba has the benefit of being one of the early Internet sites for Chinese businesses to connect, trade and buy from.

[CielOnTap]

The Economist is reporting founder Jack Ma's plan to retire in May. Alibaba shares will be put on the Hong Kong stock market later in the year.
Here is how Mr. Ma told his employees his news:

Alibaba
Alibyebye?
China’s leading internet entrepreneur, Jack Ma, springs a surprise
Jan 19th 2013 | SHANGHAI |From the print edition

“FELLOW Aliren,” begins the memo sent on January 15th by Jack Ma, the boss of Alibaba, using his pet name for his staff. “The internet belongs to young people…at 48, I am no longer ‘young’ for the internet business.” With those words Mr Ma, the founder and chief executive of China’s biggest e-commerce firm, announced he would step aside in May.

Alizila, the firm’s official newsletter, declared that the news was “bound to send a shock through the e-commerce industry.” Indeed it has. Some worry about Mr Ma’s health, though he shows no sign of illness. Others suspect a greater financial game is under way, and expect more surprises. All are puzzling over the timing of this, coming ahead of the firm’s keenly awaited flotation. http://www.economist.com/news/business/21569759-chinas-leading-internet-entrepreneur-jack-ma-springs-surprise-alibyebye?fsrc=nlw|wwb|1-17-2013|4637673|37190336|

[guitarblues]

More Alibaba-the company will have a US stock offering later this year. First, the company is buying the remainder of a Chinese map company.

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/alibaba-continuing-buying-spree-to-acquire-chinese-mapping-firm/?hpw&rref=technology

Alibaba will pay $5.25 a share to AutoNavi stockholders, or $21 an American depositary receipt, for the 72 percent of the company that it does not own, AutoNavi said in a statement on Friday. The deal values AutoNavi at $1.5 billion.

In May, Alibaba took a 28 percent stake in AutoNavi, which holds a rare mapping license from the Chinese government covering 2.2 million miles of roads in China.

Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce company, has been eager to build up its mobile offerings in China, where smartphone use is surging. Integrating AutoNavi’s services into its e-commerce sites would allow Alibaba to deliver location-specific discounts or services to its shoppers, analysts have said, or collect more detailed data on its customers’ spending habits.

Quite a strategic move, recognizing a company has a special licence and seeing its worth for mobile services!

[alohasand]

The big IPO is the news in Asia-how rich everyone is getting from the stock offering.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/07/us-alibaba-ipo-idUSBREA450VV20140507

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, which powers 80 percent of all online commerce in the world's second-largest economy, is expected to raise more than $15 billion, and could top the $16 billion pulled in by Facebook Inc when it listed in 2012.

The bulk of the proceeds will go to Yahoo Inc - which bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba in 2005 for $1 billion and which must sell more than a third of its current 22.6 percent stake through the IPO. Alibaba also plans to sell new shares, people familiar with the plans have said, to bulk up a cash war chest depleted by a rash of recent acquisitions.

Jack Ma is the name most associated with Alibaba. He also developed Alipay as an online transaction service that was spun off.

[CielOnTap]

Today was the day that Alibaba shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange and wow, it's shares yielded a higher market value than Facebook's first day of share trading. Some kind of record that was!

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. surpassed Facebook Inc. by market capitalization on its first trade as a public company for a valuation of more than $200 billion.

Founder Jack Ma, with eight Alibaba customers standing with him, rang the opening bell at the exchange.
http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/09/19/alibaba_passes_facebook_in_market_value_on_first_public_trade.html

[guitarblues]

Was that cash, PayPal, Alipay or credit for the stock purchases? I'm sure Alibaba will get bank wires for the final sum paid for the various stock buys made by other firms and individuals today. Major wow on a great first-hope that stock is valued near its actual worth. Where's a valuation date for the stock?