Chinese whispers say online sales giant Alibaba could bid for ailing Yahoo - This is Money

Last updated at 9:29 AM on 4th October 2011

Online Chinese firm Alibaba could steal Yahoo from under the noses of private equity as the race to save the ailing internet giant heats up.

Jack Ma, founder and chief executive of the online sales giant, said he was ‘very interested in Yahoo’ when asked at Stanford University, California, last week.

He told a conference on Chinese technology: ‘We are probably one of the very few companies that really understands Yahoo USA very well.’

Alibaba office: Founder Jack Ma says 'We are talking to' Yahoo

He said he wanted ‘the whole piece of Yahoo’, adding: ‘So many people interested in that. We are talking to them and they are talking to us.’

After chief executive Carol Bartz was fired last month, Yahoo founder Jerry Yang said the company was not for sale. But private equity vultures have been circling. And Yahoo has appointed New York investment bank Allen & Co to help it with a long-term ‘strategic review’.

Last year Alibaba bought two smaller US e-commerce firms, but an acquisition the size of Yahoo could require a joint bid. To complicate matters further, Yahoo owns a 40 per cent stake in Alibaba.

Shares in Yahoo, which have lost almost a fifth of their value in the last six months, closed up 0.4p at 13.6p. Internet search firms have had a testing relationship with China. Google moved its servers to Hong Kong after it refused to have its results filtered by the Chinese government.

View the original article here