Hacker News Reader

Comment by justincormack | Hacker News Reader

Pity its not Alibaba that is for sale in the "IPO" then, just a Cayman Islands company which holds a "profit participation" right which may or may not be legal in China. The article also points out that much of Alibaba is not actually owned by the company but by Jack Ma personally, so no participation in that.

View on HN

Interesting - I didn't know that as I haven't been following the story closely.

For others who may be in the same boat, I found some additional details here:

"Alibaba will not own most of its Chinese assets, including Taobao Marketplace and Alibaba.com. So the companies that are the core of Alibaba’s Chinese operations — the main reason for the anticipated heated investor demand — will not even be owned by Alibaba... Instead, the company is using a so-called variable interest entity structure."

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/06/i-p-o-revives-debate-...

if you don't know who the sucker is at the poker table, then its you.

This is an interesting fact that none of the articles i've seen so far have mentioned. Do you know how Yahoo fits into this? is their stake in the holding company as well, or in Alibaba proper?

I think they own it more directly, as the holding company is new. But they have had issues in the past.

The stock market functions almost independently of what a share "owns". It's just a big casino.

In the short term it does, the long term? Not so much.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com