{"id":11598,"date":"2012-05-05T10:08:29","date_gmt":"2012-05-05T08:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=11598"},"modified":"2012-05-07T12:08:08","modified_gmt":"2012-05-07T10:08:08","slug":"yahoo-to-sell-up-to-25-of-e-commerce-stock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/11598\/yahoo-to-sell-up-to-25-of-e-commerce-stock\/","title":{"rendered":"Yahoo to sell up to 25% of e-commerce stock"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yahoo Inc<\/a> could be weeks away from selling 15 to 25 percent of Alibaba Group’s<\/a> stock back to China’s largest e-commerce company, in a deal designed to eliminate complexities that had scuttled the parties’ previous negotiations, a person familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n

The two companies have been in talks for a month, the person said, but cautioned that there is no guarantee a deal will be reached.<\/p>\n

Numerous discussions have been held in recent years about a deal for Alibaba to reclaim some or all of the 40 percent stake in the company that Yahoo acquired in 2005.<\/p>\n

A $17 billion tax-free asset swap between the two companies fell apart in February.<\/p>\n

The latest deal would not be tax-free and would be much more straightforward, the person told Reuters on Friday.<\/p>\n

“The overall complexity of this deal is much simpler. There’s no IRS risk, there’s no complications with regards to the identification of assets,” the person said. In a best case scenario, a deal could be weeks away, the person said.<\/p>\n

The situation may have become more complicated following Thursday’s revelation that Yahoo Chief Executive Scott Thompson’s<\/a> resume falsely stated that he had earned a computer science degree in college.<\/p>\n

Yahoo, which initially called it an “inadvertent error,” has since said its board is reviewing the matter. Activist investor Third Point, which is leading a proxy fight against Yahoo’s board of director and which discovered the error in Thompson’s resume, has demanded that Yahoo fire Thompson by Monday.<\/p>\n

Yahoo and Alibaba declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Yahoo acknowledged that it was in talks with Alibaba, during its first-quarter earnings conference call with analysts last month. During the call, Thompson said the two companies were working on a “simplified” transaction to “monetize” a portion of Yahoo’s stake in Alibaba.<\/p>\n

To fund the deal, Alibaba would raise capital. The valuation that Alibaba receives in the fund-raising will determine how much Yahoo earns in the transaction, the source said.<\/p>\n

In September, Alibaba was valued at $32 billion when Silver Lake and other firms invested in the company, according to media reports at the time. At that valuation, Yahoo could make $4.8 billion to $8 billion by selling 15 to 25 percent of Alibaba.<\/p>\n

“Of all the previous ones we’ve worked on, this one feels like it might actually have a chance of getting done. Or at least it did until a day and a half ago,” the person said, referring to the controversy around Thompson’s resume.<\/p>\n

Details of the talks were first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yahoo Inc could be weeks away from selling 15 to 25 percent of Alibaba Group’s stock back to China’s largest e-commerce company, in a deal designed to eliminate complexities that had scuttled the parties’ previous negotiations, a person familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":10002,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[25,1531,677,147],"class_list":["post-11598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-active","tag-alibaba","tag-ecommerce","tag-yahoo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11598"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11715,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11598\/revisions\/11715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}