SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Jack Ma insists his Alibaba Group’s offer to take private its e-commerce website Alibaba.com for about $2.5 billion – at the same price as the firm’s IPO about four years ago – has nothing to do with a separate, complex deal over a stake in his group held by Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc.

Ma, who founded the e-commerce group and within a decade unlocked China’s huge online shopping potential, said taking Alibaba.com off the Hong Kong market would allow investors, who hold 27 percent, a chance to cash in while the unit slows its rapid pace of growth and changes its business model.

SHANGHAI, Feb 21 (Reuters) – Jack Ma insists his
Alibaba Group’s offer to take private its e-commerce website
Alibaba.com for about $2.5 billion – at the same price
as the firm’s IPO about four years ago – has nothing to do with
a separate, complex deal over a stake in his group held by
Internet pioneer Yahoo Inc.

Ma, who founded the e-commerce group and within a
decade unlocked China’s huge online shopping potential, said
taking Alibaba.com off the Hong Kong market would allow
investors, who hold 27 percent, a chance to cash in while the
unit slows its rapid pace of growth and changes its business
model.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group has offered to take its Hong Kong-listed unit Alibaba.com private at a cost of around HK$19.6 billion (1.6 billion pounds), a move it said was not related to a possible deal with Yahoo Inc on buying back Yahoo’s stake in the Chinese Internet giant.

Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma, is offering investors HK$13.50 in cash per share to take Alibaba.com private, the same as its initial public offering price in 2007, the two said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late on Tuesday.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group has offered to take its Hong Kong-listed unit Alibaba.com private at a cost of around HK$19.6 billion ($2.5 billion), a move it said was not related to a possible deal with Yahoo Inc on buying back Yahoo’s stake in the Chinese Internet giant.

Alibaba Group, founded by Jack Ma, is offering investors HK$13.50 ($1.74) in cash per share to take Alibaba.com private, the same as its initial public offering price in 2007, the two said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late on Tuesday.

Feb 21 (Reuters) – Alibaba.com, which could
soon be taken private by its founder Jack Ma, posted a first
profit decline in more than two years as a weak global economy
hit the number of paying members for its services.

The company, which operates an e-commerce website linking
Chinese businesses to overseas buyers, warned its financial
performance and membership growth could be dented further as it
shifts to a value-added-services model from a subscription-based
service.

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Apple Inc’s trademark battle moves to one of China’s richest city on Wednesday when a Shanghai court will deliberate a request by troubled technology company Proview to halt the sale of iPads across the city.

Proview Technology (Shenzhen) claims it owns the iPad trademark in China and a Shenzhen court ruled in its favor last December. Proview has since launched a multi-pronged approach to get Apple’s iPads off the shelves — with mixed success.

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG (Reuters) – Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Monday it is taking a controlling stake in Chinese e-commerce firm Yihaodian, as the world’s largest retailer seeks new revenue sources to fend off rising competition in the world’s fastest-growing major economy.

The move comes two weeks after Wal-Mart announced the appointment of industry veteran Greg Foran as head of its China operations, capping a series of leadership changes at the unit, which has been tainted by food scandals, including a pork mislabeling issue last year that forced it to temporarily shut a dozen stores in central China.

SHANGHAI/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – China’s top search engine, Baidu Inc, plans to begin monetizing its mobile search traffic and social media platforms this year in an effort to boost growth outside its traditional PC domain, Baidu’s chief executive said on Friday.

Baidu has expanded its dominant position in China’s Internet search market ever since Google Inc decided in 2010 to relocate its search engine to Hong Kong following a standoff with the Chinese government over Internet censorship.

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG, Feb 16 (Reuters) – China’s
trademark system is a minefield of murky rules and opportunistic
“trademark squatters” that even the world’s biggest companies
and their highly-paid lawyers find hard to navigate, as Apple
and Facebook are the latest to find out.

While Apple is embroiled in a legal wrangle over
the right to its “iPad” brand, Facebook has to contend with a
slew of applications for more 60 variations of its name as it
weighs up whether to enter the China market.

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A Chinese tech firm that says it owns the iPad trademark, plans to seek a ban on exports of Apple Inc’s computer tablets from China, a lawyer for the company said.

If successful, the move could deal a blow to the U.S. technology giant’s iPad sales worldwide. Not only is China a huge consumer market but it is a major production base for the American company’s iconic products including the iPad, iPhone and iPod.