Chapter 375 Attacking the Heart

"We meet again, Lao Ma."

Barron was now very familiar with Boss Ma. After meeting him, he gave him a warm hug and took him to the living room of the bungalow.

After both parties sat down, Lao Ma looked towards the stairs to the side.

Amanda Hurst was walking down from there, and she said to Barron:

"My dear, do you have anything else to do this afternoon?"

"Yes, Amanda, this is Jack Ma, my friend, we need to talk about something..."

Having said this, Barron also introduced Ma Yun:

"Amanda Hurst, my friend..."

"Hello, Mr. Ma, nice to meet you."

"Me too, Miss Hurst."

After Amanda shook hands with Boss Ma graciously, she said to Barron:

"Then I won't disturb you, dear, I'll let Laura accompany my sister and I for a walk."

"Okay, let the bodyguard accompany you."

It seems that every time I see this young Duke, he is always accompanied by beautiful women. Boss Ma can be said to be used to this...

This time the two met to discuss Yahoo's investment in Alibaba.

Boss Ma’s reasons are quite good. Although financing was just carried out last year, Alibaba’s main business is currently a free strategy, so it is very expensive.

Especially in the C2C field, in the face of various previous attacks by the powerful eBay, it can be said that the current situation of Taobao has improved a lot, but he has repeatedly stated that Taobao will implement the "three-year free" strategy. During this period, not only was there no revenue, but a large amount of money had to be invested in marketing and competing with eBay for the domestic market.

In addition to funds, Yahoo China's technical strength is also what Boss Ma values.

Speaking of which, Boss Ma himself is a layman in terms of technology, and the entire Alibaba company is indeed the most lacking in technology among the three BAT giants.

But as the number of users continues to increase, especially in e-commerce, an industry that needs a stable user experience, by acquiring Yahoo China, among other things, it will be able to solve the problem for Alibaba and Taobao in terms of searching for products on the site. There are many problems, not to mention that as an Internet giant, Yahoo China has very rich technical talents in other fields.

It just so happened that Yahoo at this time was also looking for a "successor" for Yahoo China - because Zhou Hongyi, the president of Yahoo China at this time, was working with the founder of Yahoo on the development direction of Yahoo China and was also the CEO of Yahoo at this time. Yang Zhiyuan's differences are very serious, which has also plunged Yahoo China into internal strife.

Therefore, Yang Zhiyuan no longer wants to be a Yahoo China company, and is planning to entrust it to a powerful Chinese company to operate it. With the help of Sun Zhengyi of Softbank Group, Yang Zhiyuan also believes that Alibaba is a good choice, and at the same time, it can also allow them to abandon Yahoo China In addition to this "burden", investing in Alibaba, a company that looks promising...

It can be said that the two parties hit it off immediately.

In the original time and space, the situation of Alibaba Company was not good at this time and faced many difficulties, mainly——

First, Penguin, which has always been formidable in the Chinese Internet industry, actually coerced Paipai.com to join the C2C battle, and it also used the same banner of free as Taobao, which meant that Taobao had to face it at the same time. Two powerful enemies.

Secondly, Taobao here is already short of funds, and over there, the previous rounds of venture investors of Alibaba Company have been unable to wait for Alibaba Company's listing, and are already impatiently demanding cash out. After all, they have been holding shares since 1999. Having owned equity in Alibaba for four or five years, Jack Ma had to find ways to find equity takeovers for previous rounds of investors.

Third, eBay is making a new calculation. As the saying goes, "Kill one thousand enemies, you will lose eight hundred." It is unwilling to continue the fierce battle with Taobao, so it has extended an olive branch to Sun Zhengyi, seeking to acquire Taobao and achieve C2C in China. The market dominates the country. Moreover, the price offered by eBay was an irresistible price of US$1 billion, and Sun Zhengyi was attracted by this price.

Therefore, this investment from Yahoo just solved his problem.

Their cooperation agreement at that time was for Alibaba to acquire all the assets of Yahoo China and obtain a US$1 billion investment from Yahoo, while Yahoo received a 40% stake in Alibaba.

The entire transaction between the two parties is composed of four transactions, namely:

Transaction 1: Yahoo acquired 50% of Taobao shares held by SoftBank Group for US$360 million.

Transaction 2: SoftBank Group used half of the US$360 million it received from cashing out its Taobao shares to take over the 27.7 million Alibaba shares transferred by Alibaba’s first three rounds of investors.

Transaction 3: Yahoo acquired the remaining 60 million Alibaba shares held by Alibaba’s first three rounds of investors (except SoftBank) for US$390 million.

Transaction 4: Yahoo used "US$250 million in cash + the Taobao equity purchased from SoftBank + all the assets of Yahoo China" in exchange for Alibaba to issue an additional 201.6 million shares to Yahoo.

So in fact, in this cooperation, Taobao was completely owned by Alibaba, and all previous investors were cashed out (SoftBank Group cashed out US$180 million and increased its stake, and the remaining early investors were fully cashed out) , leaving only three parties holding shares: Boss Ma’s team, SoftBank Group and Yahoo.

In the end, what Alibaba actually received, in addition to 100% of Taobao's shares, was US$250 million in cash and all the assets of Yahoo China.

At this time, the situation of Alibaba Company was still different from that of the transaction in the previous life.

First, the proportion of shares is different. With the participation of DS Capital and Rich23 Capital in this life, it can be said that Alibaba’s share structure is that Boss Ma’s team holds 40% of the shares; DS Capital and Rich23 Capital hold a total of 36% shares; SoftBank Group holds 24%.

All previous early investors have been eliminated from Alibaba’s shareholdings...

In addition, the company that holds 50% of Taobao's shares has also changed from SoftBank Group to Rich23 Capital.

"Lao Ma, I can understand your desire to introduce new investors. Even the funds you need can be provided by us, but no matter what, I will respect your choice. At the same time, I hope you understand , my shares will always stand with you. I can even promise that after Alibaba is listed in the future and before reducing our holdings, all the voting rights for the shares we hold will be handed over to us without harming our own interests. You, I believe, such conditions are something no one else can achieve..."

After hearing what Barron said after he stated those "high-sounding" reasons for cooperating with Yahoo, he naturally knew that the thoughts he had not expressed could not be hidden from the young people in front of him.

Therefore, Boss Ma's expression couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. He said:

"Your Highness the Duke, of course I will not distrust you, and we have cooperated for so long, and I will never forget the support you gave me. However, sometimes, many things cannot be decided by myself..."