"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 villa.
After both parties sat down, Lao Ma looked towards the stairs on the side.
Amanda Hearst was coming down from there, and she said to Barron:
"Honey, do you have anything else to do this afternoon?"
"Yes, Amanda, this is Jack Ma, my friend, we need to talk about something..."
At this point, Barron also introduced Jack Ma:
"Amanda Hearst, my friend..."
"Hello, Mr. Ma, nice to meet you."
"Me too, Miss Hurst."
After Amanda shook hands with Mr. Ma gracefully, she said to Barron:
"Then I won't bother you, dear. I'll let Laura go out for a walk with my sister and me."
"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 have gotten used to it...
The two met this time to discuss Yahoo's investment in Alibaba.
Boss Ma's reasons are quite sufficient. Although Alibaba had just raised funds last year, its main business is currently based on a free strategy, which is very costly.
Especially in the C2C field, facing the various attacks from the powerful Eachnet, it can be said that Taobao's situation has improved a lot. However, it has repeatedly stated that Taobao will implement a "three-year free" strategy. During this period, not only will there be no revenue, but it will also have to invest a lot of money in marketing and competing with Eachnet for the domestic market.
In addition to funding, Yahoo China's technical strength is also valued by Boss Ma.
Actually, Boss Ma himself is a layman when it comes to technology, and the entire Alibaba company is indeed the most lacking in technology among the BAT Big Three.
But as the number of users continues to increase, especially in an industry like e-commerce that requires a stable user experience, by acquiring Yahoo China, it will be able to solve many problems for Alibaba and Taobao in terms of searching for products on the site. Moreover, as an Internet giant, Yahoo China also has abundant technical talents in other areas.
It just so happened that at this time Yahoo was also looking for a "takeover" for Yahoo China - because at that time Yahoo China President Zhou Hongyi had very serious differences with Yahoo founder and Yahoo CEO Yang Zhiyuan on the development direction of Yahoo China, which also caused Yahoo China to fall into internal friction.
Therefore, Yang Zhiyuan no longer wanted to run Yahoo China and was ready to entrust it to a powerful Chinese company for operation. With the help of SoftBank Group's Sun Zhengyi, Yang Zhiyuan also believed that Alibaba was a good choice. At the same time, it would allow them to get rid of the "burden" of Yahoo China and invest in Alibaba, a company that seemed to have a promising future...
It can be said that the two sides hit it off immediately.
In the original time and space, the situation of Alibaba was not good at this time, and it faced many difficulties, mainly -
First, Penguin, a company that has always been feared in China's Internet industry, has unexpectedly brought in PaiPai.com to join the C2C battle, and like Taobao, it also uses the banner of free services, which means that Taobao has to face two powerful enemies at the same time.
Secondly, Taobao was already short of funds, and Alibaba's previous rounds of venture capitalists had been waiting for Alibaba to go public and were impatient to cash out. After all, they had held Alibaba's shares for four or five years since 1999. Jack Ma had to find a way to find equity buyers for the previous rounds of investors.
Third, eBay was making a new plan. As the saying goes, "kill one thousand enemies and lose eight hundred of your own", it was unwilling to continue the fierce battle with Taobao. So it extended an olive branch to Sun Zhengyi, seeking to acquire Taobao and thus achieve dominance in China's C2C market. Moreover, the price offered by eBay was an irresistible $1 billion, and Sun Zhengyi was tempted by the price.
Therefore, this investment from Yahoo just solved his problem.
At that time, their cooperation agreement was that Alibaba would acquire all of Yahoo China's assets and receive a $1 billion investment from Yahoo, while Yahoo would acquire 40% of Alibaba's shares.
The entire transaction between the two parties is composed of four transactions, namely:
Transaction 1: Yahoo purchased SoftBank Group's 50% stake in Taobao 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 three: Yahoo! purchased the remaining 60 million shares of Alibaba held by Alibaba's first three rounds of investors (except SoftBank) at a cost of US$390 million.
Transaction 4: Yahoo exchanged "US$250 million in cash + Taobao shares purchased from Softbank + all assets of Yahoo China" for Alibaba's issuance of 201.6 million additional shares to Yahoo.
Therefore, in fact, this cooperation ultimately resulted in Taobao being completely owned by Alibaba, and all previous investors cashed out (SoftBank Group cashed out $180 million and increased its stake, while the rest of the early investors cashed out completely), leaving only Ma's team, SoftBank Group and Yahoo holding shares.
In the end, what Alibaba actually got, 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 is different from that of the previous transaction.
First, the proportion of shares is different. With the participation of DS Capital and Rich23 Capital in this life, it can be said that the shareholding structure of Alibaba is that Boss Ma's team holds 40% of the shares; DS Capital and Rich23 Capital hold a total of 36% of the shares; and SoftBank Group holds 24% of the shares.
All previous early investors have been cleared out of Alibaba's holdings...
In addition, the company that holds 50% of Taobao's shares has changed from SoftBank Group to Rich23 Capital.
"Lao Ma, I understand your desire to bring in new investors. Even if the funds you need can be fully provided by us, I will respect your choice no matter what. At the same time, I hope you understand that my shares will always be with you. I can even promise that after Alibaba goes public in the future, before we reduce our holdings, all the voting rights of our shares will be given to you without harming our own interests. I believe that no one else can meet such conditions..."
After hearing Baron's words after he gave those "high-sounding" reasons for cooperating with Yahoo, he naturally understood that the thoughts he had not expressed could not be hidden from the young man in front of him.
Therefore, Boss Ma's expression was somewhat awkward, and he said:
"Your Highness, I certainly don't distrust you, and we have been working together for so long, and I will never forget the support you have given me. But sometimes, many things are not something I can decide on my own..."