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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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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.
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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.
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