Rumor has it that Alibaba will swallow up Sina and take over Weibo

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According to a person close to Alibaba's investment department, Alibaba is negotiating with Sina about the acquisition, but as of now, both parties have declined to comment on the news.

Previously, Alibaba already held a 32% stake in Weibo, which was spun off from Sina. Sina and Alibaba are the largest and second largest shareholders of Weibo respectively, accounting for 90.37% of the shares, while Sina's senior management team holds the remaining shares. If the rumors are true, Alibaba will also take over Weibo when it swallows Sina. It is reported that the current market value of Weibo and Sina is 3.5 billion US dollars and 3 billion US dollars respectively, while Alibaba's market value in the US stock market is 210.2 billion, which is more than 30 times the sum of the two.

A journalist friend told me that Sina’s editors and reporters are very close to Alibaba’s public relations department. Using tools such as Alipay groups and WeChat groups, the two sides have established an efficient communication mechanism, which is why almost all of Alibaba’s important information is first released by Sina. The latter has become Alibaba’s exclusive media.

In fact, among the three major Internet giants in China, in the field of news content portals, Tencent and Baidu have already launched products for PC and mobile phones (Tencent News and Baidu News), occupying a place in the market, but Alibaba still has a blank in this field.

Of course, Alibaba Group's acquisition of Sina Weibo is no longer just a one-sided speculation of the media, but has also become the expectation of Wall Street and investors in the United States. After Alibaba announced that it would spend $4.5 billion to acquire the remaining shares of Youku, Youku's stock price soared by 22%, and Sina Weibo's stock price also soared by 13.4%, becoming the second largest Chinese concept stock company to receive this favorable increase.

Previously, it was rumored that Sina would stop external recruitment in order to start business integration and optimization. According to a Sina insider, this decision was verbally communicated by HR and supervisors. However, yesterday, Sina Chairman and CEO Cao Guowei refuted the rumor, but did not respond to whether he was going to "sell himself to Alibaba."

Despite this, some investors believe that the reason for stopping social recruitment is to control costs, optimize financial reports, and sell at a good price. Cao Guowei came out to refute the rumor because of the influence of the rumor. On November 3, US time, Sina's increase was close to 9%, setting the largest intraday increase since October 16, and the stock price reached a four-month high.