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Yahoo buys US$1 billion stake in Alibaba
Yahoo Inc. announced Thursday it would pay US$1 billion in cash to acquire a 40 percent stake in the Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba.com, the Associated Press reported. As part of the deal, Yahoo has also agreed to contribute its China business, Yahoo! China, to Alibaba, according to a joint statement from the two companies.
The agreement makes Yahoo the largest strategic investor in Alibaba. The combined entity would also include 3721.com, a Chinese language search engine that Yahoo acquired last year, it said. Yahoo will have 35 percent of voting rights in Alibaba as a result of the investment, said the statement, which was distributed at a press conference in Beijing. The deal is the biggest yet in a flurry of investments in China by foreign Internet companies eager for a share of a market with more than 100 million people online. The alliance between Yahoo and Alibaba represents a
challenge to U.S.-based eBay, the world's biggest online commerce company, which
in 2003 bought a Chinese portal, eachnet.com.
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