News of the proposed acquisition have boosted shares in Nasdaq-listed AutoNavi by more than 30% since the start of May and stand at about $14.77 per share.
Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce company, has made a strategic play into the e-commerce and logistics markets with an agreed proposal to acquire a 28% stake in China-based digital mapping company AutoNavi Holdings for a reported $294m.
News of the proposed acquisition have boosted shares in Nasdaq-listed AutoNavi by more than 30% since the start of May and stand at about $14.77 per share.
The latest acquisition follows Alibaba’s 18% stake in Sina Corp’s microblogging service Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter, which was announced last month. The stake was acquired for $586m.
Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba who In 1999 raised $60,000 from 18 friends and started Alibaba from his apartment, understands the value in being a private verses publicly listed company, a lesson he learned when he took his e-commerce platform for small businesses, Alibaba.com off the Hong Kong stock market last year when global trading levels dropped. The company went public in 2007.
But Ma, who recently stepped down as chief executive after his successor, Jonathan Lu, moved up from his role as chief data officer and was groomed for the role, has plans to take the entire business public again including its other companies Taobao, Tmall and Alipay. The Wall Street Journal has pegged the pending IPO to potentially be valued at $100bn.
Later this year Ma has plans to set up a US-based fund to invest in Silicon Valley start-ups. Details of the fund have not been announced yet.
