alibaba-group

By Matthew Miller and Paul Carsten BEIJING (Reuters) – Facebook's co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg met China's propaganda tsar Liu Yunshan in Beijing on Saturday as part of a charm offensive in one of the few markets where the social network cannot be accessed. The rare meeting, reported by China's state news agency Xinhua, suggests warming relations between Facebook and the Chinese government, even as Beijing steps up censorship of and control over the Internet.

BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The logistics arm of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has completed a funding round, China's biggest e-commerce company said on Monday. Investors in the funding round of Cainiao include Singapore's Temasek Holdings [TEM.UL] and GIC Pte Ltd [GIC.UL], Malaysia's Khazanah Nasional Bhd [KHAZA.UL], and China's Primavera Capital, Alibaba said in a statement. Alibaba did not disclose details of how much money Cainiao raised, whether it issued equity shares, or at how much the logistics unit is now valued. …

China's Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said on Wednesday it would invest $1 billion into its Aliyun cloud computing arm to challenge Amazon.com Inc's lucrative Web Services division, opening a global front in the battle between the two e-commerce giants. With the global cloud computing market estimated by analysts to be worth about $20 billion, Alibaba said in a statement the investment would go toward setting up new Aliyun data centers in the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and Europe. Although Alibaba and Amazon have so far avoided competing directly in their core business of e-commerce outside China, Aliyun's international expansion takes aim squarely at Amazon Web Services (AWS), an increasingly central and profitable division of the Seattle-based company.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will launch an online video streaming service in China in about two months, hoping to emulate the U.S.'s Netflix Inc and HBO, the firm's head of digital entertainment said on Sunday. The service will be called 'TBO', or Tmall Box Office, with content bought from China and other countries, as well as in-house productions, Alibaba's Patrick Liu told reporters in Shanghai.

By John Ruwitch PUTIAN, China (Reuters) – Criticized and even sued by luxury brand Gucci and others for facilitating the counterfeit goods trade, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd has been quietly piloting a scheme to try to curb fakes at source. In the coastal city of Putian, in Fujian province, Alibaba is working with 17 shoe manufacturers to cultivate home-grown brands online, revitalize a flagging industry and offer would-be counterfeiters an alternative source of livelihood. Critics say the scheme is misguided and Alibaba should instead focus on scrubbing its online marketplaces of widespread listings of fakes.

By Nate Raymond NEW YORK (Reuters) – A group of luxury goods makers sued Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Friday, contending the Chinese online shopping giant had knowingly made it possible for counterfeiters to sell their products throughout the world. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court by Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent and other brands owned by Paris-based Kering SA seeking damages and an injunction for alleged violations of trademark and racketeering laws. The lawsuit alleged that Alibaba had conspired to manufacture, offer for sale and traffic in counterfeit products bearing their trademarks without their permission. Unfortunately, Kering Group has chosen the path of wasteful litigation instead of the path of constructive cooperation.

Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and state-owned China Telecom Corp Ltd have tied up to sell inexpensive smartphones aimed at boosting mobile commerce in smaller cities and rural areas. The phones, dubbed “Tianyi Taobao Shopping Handsets”, will come installed with either an app for easy access to Alibaba's flagship Taobao online shopping platform or its home-grown YunOS mobile operating system, it said in a statement late on Friday. The partnership is a bid to deepen Alibaba's e-commerce base in less developed parts of the country and promote its mobile operating system in a shrinking, cut-throat handset market. Mobile Taobao is China's most popular mobile shopping app with more than 200 million monthly active users, it said.

Shares of online data storage provider Box Inc rose as much as 77 percent in their market debut as investors bet on the company's ability to turn profitable in a highly competitive market, boding well for another big year for IPOs. Box's shares, which priced at $14, hit a high of $24.72 in morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, valuing the company at nearly $3 billion. The stock's enthusiastic reception also underscored healthy investor appetite for technology stocks after the blockbuster debut of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in September. Box was founded in 2005 by University of Southern California dropout Aaron Levie, the chief executive, and his friend Dylan Smith, the chief financial officer.

By Paul Carsten BEIJING (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd reported quarterly results which showed net income rising 15.5 percent to $1.11 billion for the July-September period, meeting forecasts. It was the Chinese e-commerce giant's first report to investors since its record-setting $25 billion listing in September. The non-GAAP net income – which excludes the share-based compensation expenses and amortisation of intangible assets – compared with a consensus estimate of $1.17 billion based on a Thomson Reuters SmartEstimate poll of 21 analysts. Revenue rose 53.7 percent to $2. …