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Alibaba breaks itself up in six

economist.com

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Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#181

Post by eloff »

crop_rotation wrote: post #174
eloff wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the reason the stock jumped on the news is the company is potentially worth more this way, by breaking out higher margin / faster growth units from the big retail business. A lot of Amazon investors would love to see the same with AWS. It sounds silly since nothing really changes, but it has to do with the way investors calculate the value of public companies.

This sounds good in theory but might not work in practice. None of them are profitable and depended on Tmall/Taobao for growth. Turning to the public markets would require sacrificing growth for profitability. There might be many other inter dependencies which might turn out costly to unwind. What you are saying might be how it turns out in the end, but it is not a given.

Yes, nothing is a given when it comes to the stock market.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#182

Post by 29athrowaway »

Jack Ma criticized the Chinese way of doing things, he had been planing to do an IPO for Ant group.

That IPO was canceled by the CCP, the guy disappeared for months and now his stuff is being broken up.

The message is clear: no matter who you are, criticize the party and you will get rekt.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#183

Post by ginko »

izacus wrote: post #25
quonn wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you split Apple? How would you split Meta (would you start charging for WhatsApp)?

Apple Hardware, Apple Licensed OSes, Apple Online Services, Apple Financial Services (apple card & apple pay & co), Apple News Services, Apple Mapping Services. Think of everything that Apple (Meta, Google) do, think on which components would benefit from having startups replace and distrupt them and then break them up on those seams while forcing them to allow competition between their fragments (e.g. iPhone with An…

Apple Hardware I'd split further into silicon business and device OEM. Also split out the headphone business.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#184

Post by mistrial9 »

officeplant wrote: post #173
mistrial9 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nice try to pin the blame on the USA - of course USA is guilty, but also, who chooses this path.. You cannot say that the people who do this themselves, to their own, are not responsible.

We (The USA) are incredibly guilty of a lot of poor actions and choices in South America. Including active funding & training of multiple regime leaders over decades. It's hard to choose a good path if a major world power is making sure all the good ones get shut down.

agree fully - that is why it is crucial that we have checks and balances on uniformed services, public process and the ability to speak out here. There were long and serious protests about the School of the Americas by US citizens in public. Here in this international discussion, it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#185

Post by geodel »

duxup wrote: post #6

It’s always hard for me to understand the why when it comes to China’s government. “Investors cheer the move as signalling the end of China’s tech crackdown” If this is government action then why would this be the “end” of government involvement?

In terms of demographic Chinese population has now started declining. So China is no longer in need of aggressive, exploitative model of capitalism they were following for last few decades because they needed job growth at any cost.

To western eyes suddenly Alibaba seems to be kind of hero standing up to authoritarian government but from what I read what really got Alibaba in govt crosshairs was its predatory finance business. I don't think any country would have liked this type of business but many would've tolerated because "free enterprise / follow the law" thinking.

So the way I see this is "law taking its course" Chinese way and proactively taking action against business which could be socially bad in future.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#186

Post by the_af »

mistrial9 wrote: post #184
officeplant wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (The USA) are incredibly guilty of a lot of poor actions and choices in South America. Including active funding & training of multiple regime leaders over decades. It's hard to choose a good path if a major world power is making sure all the good ones get shut down.

agree fully - that is why it is crucial that we have checks and balances on uniformed services, public process and the ability to speak out here. There were long and serious protests about the School of the Americas by US citizens in public. Here in this international discussion, it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context.

> it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context

But this isn't what I said. I definitely didn't say "the USA did it". What I said was:

> always remember our militaries in Latin America were trained in these tactics by the US government

Which is both fair and accurate. The US was definitely involved one way or the other in most Latin American dictatorships of that era, enabling atrocities under the guise of fighting communism and insurgencies in their "back yard".

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#187

Post by freedomben »

SilverBirch wrote: post #19
duxup wrote: post #6

It’s always hard for me to understand the why when it comes to China’s government. “Investors cheer the move as signalling the end of China’s tech crackdown” If this is government action then why would this be the “end” of government involvement?

I'm not an expert on this, but from what I gather this all leads back to a power struggle between Jack Ma and Xi Jinping. Ma was ready to go public with AliPay and in the build up to it made a speech that criticised the government regulation as being out of date. This was viewed as a challenge to the governments power. Over the next few months the government moved to tighten regulations on companies like AliPay and d…

Good analysis. Related: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/alibaba-founder-jack-ma-b...

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#188

Post by kranke155 »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #157
bakuninsbart wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think very highly of Jack Ma, but eloquence for non-native speakers should be judged very differently, especially for someone coming from a language very far away linguistically.

Exactly, Ma was kinda struggling to get a train of thought across linguistically and half the time when Musk interrupted him he was rather making fun of some poor choice of words and being like "lol whatever" than trying to actually engage in a conversation. And I guess now with the Twitter shitshow Musk doesn't exactly look like a genius either.

Pretty much impossible to defend Elon's Twitter tenure. Can't think of a single thing he did that made that company more valuable.

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#189

Post by mistrial9 »

the_af wrote: post #186
mistrial9 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

agree fully - that is why it is crucial that we have checks and balances on uniformed services, public process and the ability to speak out here. There were long and serious protests about the School of the Americas by US citizens in public. Here in this international discussion, it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context.

> it is not complete or wholly accurate IMHO to say "the USA did it" without knowing some context But this isn't what I said. I definitely didn't say "the USA did it". What I said was: > always remember our militaries in Latin America were trained in these tactics by the US government Which is both fair and accurate. The US was definitely involved one way or the other in most Latin American dictatorships of that era,…

>> We (The USA) are incredibly guilty of a lot of poor actions and choices in South America.

> agree fully

.. The US was definitely involved one way ..

how are we not in agreement now?

Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six

#190

Post by SilverBirch »

voisin wrote: post #31
SilverBirch wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an expert on this, but from what I gather this all leads back to a power struggle between Jack Ma and Xi Jinping. Ma was ready to go public with AliPay and in the build up to it made a speech that criticised the government regulation as being out of date. This was viewed as a challenge to the governments power. Over the next few months the government moved to tighten regulations on companies like AliPay and d…

> So people are hoping that now the worst of it is done What is the basis of this hope?

Well, the problem was that Jack Ma was getting so powerful by being in charge of a massive tech empire he was threatening the CCP's power. The remaining split up companies are no where near as big or powerful, are staffed largely by people who have been put in by the CCP, and now know what happens to people who criticise the government. They've made their point, so the question is... why not ease up a bit and let prosperity return. Look at the absurd hype around AI in the US right now, I'd imagine the CCP would be quite worried that they're going to lose a strategic position in this technology if they don't ease up.

Also, they've just got to ease up at some point right?

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