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Alibaba
Tech

Japan’s SoftBank concludes run as Alibaba’s biggest shareholder, drawing to a close one of the most successful internet deals in China

  • SoftBank expects to book US$8.5 billion, about 425 times the value of its Alibaba investment, for its 2024 financial year after divesting its shares
  • The Japanese tech conglomerate said it has no plans to ‘buy or sell any new Alibaba shares’ in the future

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SoftBank Group Corp’s Masayoshi Son, who invested US$20 million in Alibaba Group Holding in 2000, speaks at a conference in Tokyo, Japan, on July 20, 2017. Photo: Reuters
Coco Fengin Beijing
Japanese investment holding firm SoftBank Group Corp has largely cleared its ownership in e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding, concluding one of the most successful deals in China’s internet industry and a holding that spanned about 23 years.
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SoftBank, which invested US$20 million into Alibaba when it was still a start-up in 2000, said in a corporate filing on Thursday that it was set to book a gain of 1.26 trillion yen (US$8.5 billion) – about 425 times the value of its initial outlay – for the Tokyo-based firm’s 2024 financial year after divesting its shares via subsidiary Skybridge. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
The filing confirmed a Post report on Wednesday that Alibaba co-founders Jack Ma and Joe Tsai had become the largest shareholders of the company they established in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, in 1999.

The SoftBank transaction involved 512.3 million Alibaba shares sold through a “prepaid forward contract” between Skybridge and financial institutions in April 2020, which was settled between October 2021 and January 2024. That deal involved about a fifth of Alibaba’s total outstanding shares and nearly all of SoftBank’s stake in the Chinese firm.

Masayoshi Son, the founder, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp, left, and Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma shake hands at Tokyo Forum 2019 in Japan on December 6, 2019. Photo: Bloomberg
Masayoshi Son, the founder, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group Corp, left, and Alibaba Group Holding founder Jack Ma shake hands at Tokyo Forum 2019 in Japan on December 6, 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

A SoftBank representative said on Friday that most of the company’s remaining 13 per stake in Alibaba is used for asset-backed finance. In its statement on Thursday, SoftBank said it has no plans to “buy or sell any new Alibaba shares” in the future.

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Its long partnership with Alibaba helped pave the way for a whole generation of Chinese entrepreneurs to benefit from greater access to overseas funding, which greatly expanded the country’s tech industry and bolstered the country’s economic development.
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