While waiting for Alibaba’s share price to recover here are some fun facts mostly historical for current investors to digest. As the saying goes to get an idea of where a company is going one has to look at where it came from.
Alibaba was founded during the heights of the dot com bubble by Jack Ma with a total of 18 partners in his Lakeside Gardens apartment in Hangzhou China. Its value is Customer first, Employee second and Shareholders third so investor must know where they are in the pecking order.
Fun Fact 1
Jack Ma manage to convince Joe Tsai to leave his $700k job in HK to join Alibaba for $600 a year. It was a crazy decision but one seldom gets to lived and chase their dream
Fun Fact 2
In 1999 Goldman Sach was one of the first investor in Alibaba with an investment of $3.3m. 5 years later Goldman sold its stake for $22m. Had Goldman held onto its investment, their stake in Alibaba would have been worth more than the entire value of Goldman itself.
Fun Fact 3
SoftBank made its first maiden investment into Alibaba with $20m after Jack Ma hit off with its CEO Masayoshi Son in 2000 with no business plan and zero revenue. What Masayoshi saw was the leader in Jack Ma. SoftBank continues hold a 24% stake in Alibaba and is currently its largest shareholder
Fun Fact 4
Jerry Yang then Yahoo’s CEO invested $1b into Alibaba in 2005 for a 30% stake. With the investment Yahoo transfer its China search business to Alibaba and exited from the China market. After Yahoo’s investment Alibaba shareholders are Employees 40%, SoftBank 30% and Yahoo 30%.
Fun Fact 5
Taobao was a secret project started by Jack Ma to challenge E-Bay China in 2002. Few employees knew about the project and was once fear as a strong Alibaba competitor.
Fun Fact 6
Cainiao Logistic runs an asset light business model providing technical expertise to logistic partners who owns the warehouses. It is akin to REIT manager running a REIT but not investing in its real estate infrastructure
Fun Fact 7
Alipay was establish in 2004 to facilitate transaction between buyers and sellers. In 2011 Alipay was divested to Jack Ma without the knowledge of both SoftBank and Yahoo. The reason for the divestment was to obtain a payment business license which are only issue to PRC-owned entities. Subsequently Alipay was restructured into Ant Financials and a 33% stake was injected back into Alibaba.
Fun Fact 8
In 2007 Alibaba listed its B2B portal Alibaba.com in Hong Kong at an offer price of HK$13.50. It close at HK$39.50 on the first day of trading. It was subsequently delisted in 2012 for the same price of HK$13.50 after a fraud scandal broke out
Fun Fact 9
Microsoft nearly became a major shareholder of Alibaba after it made a $45b takeover bid for Yahoo to challenge Google in the search engine war. It’s then CEO Jerry Yang rejected the deal and was sack after the financial crisis hit shortly after. Jerry Yang remains a board member of Alibaba to this day.
Fun Fact 10
MYNEST.SG 