Pursuits
Alibaba Offers $4.6 Billion for Rest of Youku Video Site
- Bid is a 30% premium to Youku Tudou's closing price Thursday
- Online videos watched by 461 million people in China
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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. offered about $4.6 billion to buy the rest of Youku Tudou Inc. as billionaire Jack Ma seeks to stream more video content to Chinese Internet users through control of the YouTube-like site.
Alibaba will pay the amount in cash for the 81.7 percent of the video website it doesn’t already own, Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu said during a conference call on Friday. Youku has $1.1 billion in net cash, resulting in a price of about $3.5 billion for Alibaba, she said. Alibaba’s bid of $26.60 a share is 30 percent more than Thursday’s closing price. Youku rose 22 percent, the most since March 2012, to $24.91 at the close Friday in New York. Alibaba was little changed at $71.99.