Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. offered to pay $3.6 billion in cash for its remaining stake in video website Youku Tudou Inc., according to a person familiar with the matter.
The person asked not to be named because the information hasn’t been made public. Alibaba is offering $26.60 a share in cash for the 81.7 percent of Youku shares it doesn’t already own, according to a Business Wire statement Friday.
Buying Youku Tudou, China’s most popular video-streaming website, would let Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma deliver U.S. films and drama series to more than a third of the population. Ma toured California in October 2014, looking for content to beam to Chinese consumers.
Alibaba is paying a premium of about 30 percent to Youku Tudou’s Thursday closing price in New York. Youku, which has risen 15 percent this year, climbed 4.9 percent to $20.43 on Thursday. Alibaba advanced 4.7 percent to $71.78.
Like Alibaba, Youku is zeroing in on U.S. studios for programming. The company, which mostly streams professionally produced content rather than amateur videos, plans to collaborate with U.S. entertainment producers to create content that could be watched on its website, Chairman Victor Koo said in an Oct. 27 interview in Hong Kong.
source: Bloomberg
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