Friday, May 11, 2012

Alibaba-Yahoo negotiations resume, Taobao staff arrested in graft case


News this week: According to media reports, China’s largest e-commerce company Alibaba Group has once again begun to negotiate with Yahoo to buy back 15% - 25% of the 40% stake which Yahoo currently holds. A previous attempt in February this year to arrange a US$17 billion tax-free asset swap failed to materialise.

Yahoo’s CEO Scott Thompson disclosed during the company’s Q1 earnings conference call that the two parties involved were working on a “simplified” transaction to monetise a portion of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba.

Media reports in September 2011 valued the Alibaba Group at US$32 billion when private equity firms including Silver Lake invested in the company. According to that valuation, Yahoo could be paid US$4.8 billion to US$8 billion through selling a 15% to 25% stake in Alibaba back to the company.

In a separate report, Alibaba’s B2C e-commerce platform, Taobao, has reportedly been hit by an internal fraud scheme. The company disclosed that a number of Taobao employees have been arrested for taking bribes to delete negative comments about certain online merchants and raising the merchants’ credit ratings. Nine online stores of the vendors involved have been shut down.

Last year, Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com faced a similar scandal which led to the resignation of former CEO David Wei and COO Elvis Lee.

This post is excerpted from BSG's weekly e-newsletter which is part of our subscription research service, BSG Tracker. Visit our website to find out more about this service. You can also follow us on Twitter for all the latest updates.


1 comment:

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