Alibaba open to sovereign wealth investment

Jack Ma, founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, said his firm is looking to sell equity to a sovereign wealth entity to fund its share buyback from Yahoo (YHOO.NASDAQ), Bloomberg reported. “You need to have some guy with deep pockets,” said Ma. “I want to make sure it has healthy corporate governance. I don’t want another big guy coming here. Five years later, 10 years later, the next generation of leadership cannot stand the pressure from shareholders.” Last month Alibaba agreed to buy a 20% stake back from Yahoo for US$7.1 billion. However, the ailing US search engine still controls 49.9% of voting rights. Alibaba is now in the process of restructuring and may launch an IPO within five years, Ma said. The company is looking for a “healthy shareholder structure” to allow management the leeway to run the company.