Six Baby Babas Beats One Big Alibaba
It was getting too large for its own good, so the e-commerce giant is smart to make the pro-active move.
Unlocking value?
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergChinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is not long for this world. The company founded by Jack Ma 24 years ago is getting split into six smaller units, cutting it down to a more palatable size and ensuring it’s no longer too big to succeed.
After a tumultuous few years, during which its fintech affiliate Ant Group Co. had its Hong Kong-listing pulled by regulators at the last minute, a slicing up of this $222 billion conglomerate is a means to its own survival. A series of antitrust actions, part of President Xi Jinping’s broader crackdown on internet companies, made the Hangzhou-based operation too much of a tall poppy for Beijing to tolerate.