Yahoo to offload entire stake in Alibaba.com

Yahoo is selling its entire 1.14 per cent stake in Alibaba.com, China's largest business-to-business, e-commerce and the flagship company of Alibaba Group for about $150 million.

Yahoo, the second-biggest internet search engine in the US is a major shareholder in Alibaba Group, holding a 39-per cent stake. Yahoo also holds 57.48 million shares or 1 per cent stake in the Hong Kong-listed Alibaba.com, which it is now offloading.

Yahoo! will be selling the shares for 19.80-20.30 Hong Kong dollars each, representing a discount of 4.0 to 6.4 per cent on Alibaba.com's Monday's closing price of 21.15 Hong Kong dollars.

Even after selling the shares at a discount, the Sunnyvale, California-based company will be making a good return of nearly 47 per cent on the $1.7 billion initial public offering in 2007 of Alibaba.com, priced at HK$13.50.

Last week, Alibaba Group founder and Chairman Jack Ma had offloaded 13 million shares of Alibaba.com, which fetched him $34.8 million.

Although there was a lock up period until November, Yahoo was able to sell the IPO shares since Alibaba had waived the lock up period earlier in June this year.

The Chinese company had said at that time that the move would boost liquidity of its shares. Its parent company, Alibaba Group holds 74 per cent in the e-commerce company.