Media and entertainment:
Hollywood content may be the latest to Alibaba’s shopping list, as Jack Ma paid his visit last week, seeking US films and TV series for Youku Tudou, China’s most popular video-streaming website, of which the Internet behemoth owns about 17 percent stake.
Alibaba has already signed agreements to be able to stream content such as The Hunger Games since July, according to Bloomberg.
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Wasu Media decided in April to sell its 20 percent stake for 6.54 billion yuan to Hangzhou Yunxi Investment Partnership Enterprise, which is owned by Jack Ma and other partners.
The Shenzhen-listed media company announced a cooperation agreement with Alibaba at the same time for online content and Internet TV.
Jack Ma’s personal investment portfolio also includes about 4.13 percent stake of Huayi Brothers Media, according to GF Securities.
Sports and healthcare
"Soccer is a very charming sport. Investing in the industry is more like investing in happiness. It is a rational approach," said Jack Ma at a press conference in June when Alibaba Group announced to pay up to 1.2 billion yuan for a 50 percent share of Guangzhou Evergrande Football Club, China’s first-ever winner of the Asian Football Confederation Champions League.
Ma added that the investment is in line with the company’s strategy which is to pursue health and happiness.
Alibaba Group and Yunfeng Capital, a private equity firm co-founded by Jack Ma, invested about $171 million to gain control of healthcare data company CITIC 21CN in January.
The Hong Kong-listed company is engaged software development for drug authentication.
Internet and technology
Alibaba announced in July that it had completed the acquisition of AutoNavi Holdings Ltd after a proposal months earlier to take full control of the US-listed digital mapping company.
In May last year, Alibaba acquired 28 percent of AutoNavi's shares for $294 million. Its all-cash offer in February proposed to acquire the remaining 72 percent at $21 per American depositary share, which values AutoNavi at approximately $1.58 billion.
The deal was followed by Alibaba’s announcement in June of buying remaining shares of mobile browser firm UCWeb in the biggest merger of Chinese Internet history.
In a drive for strategic expansion on mobile, the ecommerce giant previously acquired 18 percent shares of microblog platform Sina Weibo for $586 million, and undisclosed stake in Chinese online travel site Qyer.com and cloud-storage service platform Kanbox in 2013.
Consumer staples:
Yunfeng Capital and CTIC Private Equity bought a combined 60 percent stake in Chinese dairy giant Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group.
The shares bought in the unit are worth at least 2 billion yuan.
The ecommerce behemoth also tapped its investments into offline shopping, as Alibaba announced it had invested about 4.26 billion yuan in Intime Retail Company Limited, one of China’s leading department store operators, said its latest quarterly report.
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