Alibaba Group stands to get up to $6 billion in a spinoff of its Alipay e-payment division under a long-awaited deal the Chinese company struck with partners Softbank Corp and Yahoo Inc. Shares of Yahoo, which owns 43 percent of Alibaba, initially jumped on the deal.
But they reversed course and were down 2.5 percent at $13.16 by late morning, as investors grew concerned about the company's ability to control, and wring benefit from, its prized Asian assets. The pact, announced in a joint statement on Friday, brings some relief to Yahoo investors but does not resolve the issue of how Yahoo can capitalise on its Asian assets, considered on Wall Street the most valuable slice of the struggling US Web company. "This deal just repairs a problem but the value transfer that occurred gave Yahoo the short end of the stick," said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis.