Alibaba had already hired Duberstein Group (an American company), they will negotiate for acquiring Yahoo asset. Analysts thought Alibaba might buy Yahoo all Asian assets.

Softbank Corporation who has a 30 percent stake in Alibaba and also is Yahoo’s a partner in Japan becomes a lobby group with Alibaba.

September, Alibaba founder Jack Ma had expressed: if opportunity is acceptable, he is interested in the Yahoo.

The lobby company in Washington can help Alibaba respond to U.S. political opposition, avoid the internet control and inspection and so on, to let Mr Ma acquire the assets of Yahoo.

“Sometime ‘national security’ is just an excuse, the real reason is the commercial purpose. ” Marbridge Consulting, executive director, Mark Natkin point out:” I don’t think that there will be a big problem about Alibaba acquires Yahoo, the users can still share or keep date follow their inclinations. Whether or not concern the company of attribution where the user decisions. ”

Sale situation will become clear

Alibaba, Softbank and Yahoo have been looking for good means to be able to disentangle the complicated relationship among them. An insider says, early in the autumn, Alibaba had hired Duberstein and the private equity firms to deal with the acquisition about Yahoo. Although these private equity firms had attempted to buy all assets of Yahoo, but the result of discussion, they thought of selling Yahoo off in pieces maybe was a better idea. American assets will be belonged to the purchase group, while Asian assets will be sold to Alibaba and Softbank.

An insider says, at present the situation of the acquisition about Yahoo has became clear. Yahoo will plan to sell the Asian assets to Alibaba and Softbank. The part of the value is $17 billion. Alibaba can also buy-back Yahoo had 40% of the group holding shares, getting the ownership Yahoo in Japan.

Yahoo has been finding a reasonable way to deal with the business and reform the style, to copy with Google and Facebook.

In early December, the media had reported that a few lenders were considering for Alibaba providing $4 billion loans to help the company buy-back Yahoo had 40% of the group holding shares.

The background of lobbying companys

According to the U.S. congressional record, Alibaba had submitted some documents, preliminarily revealed the company intent to lobby the U.S. government.

Kenneth Duberstein is responsible for Duberstein group who was served as a staff of the officials in White House when President Reagan. The company also includes BP, Goldman sachs, Pfizre and so on.

In addition, Duberstein says, American law firms like Wachtell, Lipton and Rosen & Katz will serve as the lobbying team of Alibaba and Duberstein.

December 23, the United States senate office had received the related records of lobbying team, then it issued to online. But the lobby about the takeover of Yahoo maybe has already started.

According to the law of the United States, lobby companies must disclosure of relevant files to the public in 45 days when they were in contact with officials formally. Alibaba’s record says, the matters had already launched on December 1, 2011 formally.

The combined C2C online trading platform will have 250 million registered users and 450 million products. It will help Japanese vendors sell their products to Chinese consumers, and Chinese firms will be able to serve Japanese consumers.

“It will be a very important opportunity for small and medium businesses in the two countries to expand distribution channels and online trading will continue to be a very strong contributor to the Asian economy,” said Masayoshi Son, president and chairman of the board of Softbank Corp.

Vendors who aim to sell on the new platform will go through a screening process and will be subject to Customs regulations in the two countries. Buyers may pay extra fees for logistics if they purchase goods from overseas vendors. The companies will release details in early June.

Taobao.com and Yahoo Japan will each launch a new sub-section next month to provide Chinese users with Japanese products and Yahoo Japan’s users will get access to Chinese products on Taobao.com.

Softbank is the controlling shareholder of Yahoo Japan and the second-biggest shareholder of Alibaba Group.

Source : Konaxis

The joint innovation lab will serve as a platform for the parties to develop mobile services and drive innovation and synergy in the industry to the benefit their combined global customer base, and it will also launch projects based on emerging technologies and market demand.

The Lab reportedly will focus on pushing the development of new mobile technology, application and services such as mobile widgets. In the initial stage, it plans to develop a platform for mobile widgets to encourage the development of innovative new services that can leverage mobile operators’ unique capabilities. The parties hope that the lab can enable different widgets and applications to run seamlessly on different handset platforms and operating systems across different mobile operators, while safeguarding customer security, data privacy and billing systems.

The proposed lab is awaiting regulatory approval in China, and the parties have not provided a definitive date when they will have their grand opening.

Source : Chinatechnews

With a total population of only about seven million, Hong Kong is not an area that AOL can expect to earn lots of revenue. However it is an important psychological and strategic bid for the company as it hopes to jumpstart its America Online name and bring American business hegemony to Greater China netizens. The company will provide email, instant messaging, and regional content from local partners on this Hong Kong destination.

‘The launch of AOL.hk is just the beginning of an ongoing effort to provide consumers in Hong Kong with the services and content they want,’ warned Norman Koo, VP and general manager for Greater China, in a press statement. ‘Our industry-leading products and programming combined with our content partnerships will provide a unique experience for consumers and advertisers, as well as an international, regional and local mix of news, finance and entertainment information.’

Similar to a deal announced in Taiwan, AOL will provide a co-branded language portal for users of HP desktop and notebook PC’s in Hong Kong. This deal will assist AOL in claiming to advertisers a certain amount of users and help to create greater brand equity.