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The relationship between Alibaba and Yahoo hasn't been great in a long time, and there's substantial governance risk to owning a large stake in a Chinese company which hates you. Owning 20% of a $35b company could be worth less than $7b if they decide to make things difficult, and there is limited recourse. I don't think this sale is being driven by Yahoo.

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Yeah, very true. It's probably best this sale went ahead then. If there is one thing you don't do, its mess with the Chinese especially in the business world. Yahoo! needs the cash anyway.

Yahoo needs many things, but cash isn't one of them. They have no debt and have billions in cash in the bank already that they don't know what to do with. The only reason they are doing this is to appease shareholders. And in that sense I suppose you could say that they need the cash, but short of doing a one-time dividend payout to shareholders I don't think they have any idea what they are going to do with it.

Agree. From my perspective, Mayun, the CEO of Alibaba, precisely provided this trade.

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