Yahoo to buy 10% shares in upcoming Alibaba.com IPO
October 9th, 2007 Leave a comment Visited 24 times, 2 so far today
Yahoo to buy 10% shares in upcoming Alibaba.com IPO
Market sources say that the US based internet company Yahoo would be acquiring 10 percent of the shares to be sold by Alibaba.com through their IPO.
Alibaba.com is the dominating e-commerce company in the China and is one of the most important online company in that market.
They are expecting to raise US$1 billion through this initial public offering.
Alibaba.com would be offering on sale 858.9 million shares which comes to around 17 percent of its enlarged share capital. It would be listed in Hong Kong.
Sources further stated that out of these 75 percent would be available to global investors. 15 percent would be for the Hong Kong retail investors. Yahoo would be taking the rest of the 10 percent shares.
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October 28th, 2007 at 9:12 am
There can be no doubt about it: Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma is an extremely savvy businessman, and he deserves a web celebrity status for having created, and managed, Alibaba. Jack Ma was an English teacher before he started Alibaba on a shoe string in 1999. Now his firm, which employs more than 4000 people, is going public, and will raise US-$ 1,5 billion in what many call the most successful IPO in the history of the Hong Kong stock market.
Reports from Hong Kong indicate that the transaction is going to be a very profitable deal for both Mr. Ma and the new shareholders, some 80% of them corporate investors such as the US web giant Yahoo!, Cisco Systems, and AIG Global Investments. Yahoo!’s shares have already surged spectacularly.
This is all very exciting financial stuff… BUT – the new Alibaba stockholders and the media should also know this:
Alibaba is not only China’s biggest e-commerce firm but also the world’s largest online shark fin trader. While environmentalists, ocean lovers and a growing world-wide scuba diving community find this utterly scandalous, the Yahoo! top managers don’t seem to mind. They already have a US-$ 1 billion stake in Alibaba representing a 40% shareholding, and, as reported, will soon increase their investment in the Chinese internet company by another 8-10%.
Activist groups, thousands of petitioning individuals from all over the world, media organizations have approached both Alibaba and Yahoo! to induce them to drop the shark fin trade. Nothing convinced these hard-boiled business people that they ought to adopt a responsible corporate attitude toward environmental matters.
While the Alibaba executives non-chalantly stated that they do not wish to “take sides” in the ongoing “controversy”, Yahoo! sheepeishly claimed that they are not in a position to interfere with the business policies of corporations in which they don’t have a majority shareholding. Yeah, right….
The fact of the matter is that both firms do not want to end the highly lucrative trade of shark fins. They blatantly ignore the well-founded conclusion of internationally renowned marine experts that the indiscriminate mass killing of sharks mostly for their fins, well over 100.000.000 animals per year, is driving many species into extinction with catastrophic consequences for the biodiversity of the world’s oceans.
The practice of “finning” sharks is a most cruel way to cut off the fins from live sharks, and then to dump the hapless creatures back to the sea where they face a slow and painful death.
By offering international shark fin dealers a convenient platform to do business Alibaba / Yahoo! are fueling the often illegal finning of sharks and, thus, actively and recklessly contribute to an environmental crime they are very well aware of.
Here is an article that was published by Business Week recently:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jul2007/gb20070720_756191.htm
And by clicking this link you will find a passionate letter from Captain Paul Watson, CEO of the Sea Shepherd Society, to Susan Decker, President of Yahoo!:
http://www.seashepherd.org/news/media_071004_1_article.html
The international pressure on Alibaba to stop trading shark fins will increase. Soon, Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Ms. Decker of Yahoo! will have to realize that the firm’s active involvement in this highly unsavory business which is partially controlled by brutal Mafia-type organizations will severely damage its reputation, not only in the United States and Europe but wherever they have educated clients who care about the health of this blue planet.
While too many Chinese seem to find nothing wrong with killing sharks for a tasteless soup of no other value than some dubious social prestige for those who consume it, the enlightened citizens of the world will staunchly oppose the ruthless extermination of animals that have been around long before God even dreamt of creating Adam and Eve….