Ken King '87 Shares Details of Recent Yahoo!-Alibaba Deal in China Just hours after China's biggest-ever Internet deal was closed, Ken King '87 gave the Boalt community an insider's perspective on the newly forged partnership between Yahoo! Inc. and Alibaba.com, the largest e-commerce company in China. “It was one of the most complex, difficult deals I've ever been involved with,” said King, a partner in charge of the Palo Alto and San Francisco offices of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, in an October 24 talk at Boalt Hall. An expert in corporate and securities law, King represented Sunnyvale-based Yahoo in the transaction valued at more than $4 billion.
Announced last August, the deal was completed on October 24 with a $1 billion cash transfer plus $700 million in assets from Yahoo's China operation, King said. In exchange, Yahoo now owns a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com. Alibaba is China 's top e-commerce company with a network of online marketplaces—including an auction site—that reach more than 20 million registered users worldwide. King noted that the transaction also creates a partnership for Yahoo with Alibaba's “very sophisticated” management team in China under the leadership of the company's CEO, Jack Ma. “I think what Yahoo was looking for was domestic management expertise in China,” King said. “That was really what was informing a lot of the approach.”
King's talk, “Cross-Border M & A: Doing the Yahoo!-Alibaba Deal in China,” was sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy (BCLBE), Boalt's new research center focused on the impact of law on business and the U.S. and global economies. Part of BCLBE's ongoing speaker series, King's presentation drew about 200 people. “You can think about the deal in lots of different ways,” explained King, who serves as a member of BCLBE's advisory board. “Ultimately, it was something of a joint venture.” Read the full story.
(10/25/05)
