Alibaba Group

The Alibaba Group ( Sino阿里巴巴 集团, Pinyin ālǐbābā Jituan ) is a company based in Hangzhou ( China). It operates inter alia, the successful eponymous B2B platform Alibaba.com and the online auction site Taobao and claims to be the largest IT company group in China. In the year 2007 4400 permanent staff were employed by the company. At the company, inter alia, Yahoo and Softbank, the Japanese are involved.

Corporate structure

The group is divided into six subsidiaries:

• Alibaba.com: Business-to -business trading platform

• Taobao: Online Auction Site

• Yahoo! China: Chinese offshoot of the Internet portal

• Alipay: online payment system

• Alisoft: Web Services for Chinese companies from the SME sector

• Juhuasuan: online advertising service

Company History

The website Alibaba.com was founded by Jack Ma in 1999. The official founding of the Group took place in the same year. 2003 Taobao was opened, which is becoming the most successful online auction site in Asia. On 11 August 2005 Yahoo announced its intention to want to acquire a 40% interest in the company. Yahoo climbed for a billion dollars in Alibaba. Between 2004 and 2007, the other online services Alipay, Alisoft and Juhuasuan who qualified by two successful Internet portals emerged. End of April 2007 took the company public the website Alibaba.com. In May 2012, Yahoo began, for about $ 7.1 billion re-sell half of its 40 % stake back to Alibaba. The transaction was completed in September 2012. Since then, so Yahoo still holds 20% stake in Alibaba.