China's Internet auctioneer flagship Alibaba Technology Co. Ltd. will
continue to focus on integrating the Yahoo China operation, Jack Ma, chief
executive officer of Alibaba.com, said Friday, ruling out plans for new
acquisition or stock listing in near future.
"To many people, putting his company on the stock market is a matter of
course; but I haven't thought about it because I'm not short of money," Ma told
Xinhua when attending an investment promotion symposium here held by east
China's Hangzhou city.
"What's more, we have to digest for a while after taking such a chunk of
food," Ma referred to Alibaba's merger and acquisition of Yahoo Inc.'s
China-based web portal last August.
He said Alibaba has almost finished the reorganization of Yahoo China's
business by projecting all its resources to develop the on-line Chinese-language
search engine.
Only 6 percent of Yahoo China's technicians left the company after the
merger, far below the average level of 30 percent of brain drain following a
company's merger and acquisition, Ma said, promising consumers a totally
different Yahoo China one year after the acquisition.
As China's largest e-commerce website, Alibaba.com acquired Yahoo China last
August with a package of Yahoo China's assets includes Yahoo's search
technology, the Yahoo China website, its communication and advertising business,
as well as 3721.com, a Chinese language search engine.
As part of the acquisition agreement, Alibaba also obtained 1 billion U.S.
dollars of investment from Yahoo as well the exclusive right of using the Yahoo
brand.
In return, Yahoo will take 40 percent of Alibaba's shares but have 35 percent
of voting rights in the company.
"Yahoo China looks more like a company than before, in terms of its website,
the staff's attitudes or its structure," Ma described the progress of
readjustment of the company six months after the acquisition deal.
In January, Alibaba announced to invest 30 million yuan (3.75 million U.S.
dollars) to invite three renowned Chinese film directors to shoot an
advertisement for the search engine business respectively.
"What we are doing is to design an on-line search engine for ordinary people,
not just the engineers," Ma said. "We are more focused and a totally search
engine technology will come to the Chinese market within three to five years."
Alibaba's ambition highlighted the intense rivalry in China's market of more
than 100 million Internet users with major players, including search giant
Google Inc. and Chinese-language Baidu.com, competing for more Internet users in
China's vast market.
Ma, a former English teacher, is one of China's best-known Internet
entrepreneurs after his successful acquisition of Yahoo China last August.
Alibaba.com, based in Hangzhou city southwest of Shanghai, runs online
commerce sites that link foreign buyers with Chinese wholesalers. Its popular
consumer auction site Taobao.com competes with the Chinese arm of eBay Inc.
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