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.
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1 comment:
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