Temasek Holdings Pte sold shares in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) in the fourth quarter, as the biggest Chinese e-commerce company’s shares rallied following its initial public offering (IPO), and put more money into pharmaceuticals maker Gilead Sciences Inc.
Singapore’s state-owned investment firm sold 7.3 million American depositary receipts (ADR) in Alibaba, leaving it with 10.7 million shares, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.
The value of the holding declined by US$487.5 million, the biggest decrease among the firm’s US-listed stakes.
“They must have made about US$300 million through that sale,” said Enrico Soddu, an analyst at Institutional Investor’s Sovereign Wealth Center in London. “When everyone was buying, they were selling.”
Alibaba shares have been declining after reaching a record US$120 in November, paring their post-IPO return to 31 percent.
The company, founded by billionaire Jack Ma (馬雲), raised US$25 billion in the largest IPO in history on Sept. 18, selling shares for US$68 each.
Ma has a US$35.1 billion fortune as of Friday after adding US$6.7 billion this year, the most among the world’s richest people, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The increase made him Asia’s wealthiest person and put him ahead of Amazon.com Incs Jeff Bezos and Facebook Inc’s Mark Zuckerberg.
For Temasek, the sale is not a vote against Alibaba as it still owns a sizable stake, Soddu said.
Temasek also holds Alibaba shares through a unit called Seatown Holdings Pte, which reported owning 7.45 million ADRs at the end of the fourth quarter. That stake was unchanged from the previous quarter.
Temasek had invested S$50 million (US$37 million) in Alibaba in its fiscal year ended March 2011, it said in that year’s annual report. It was one of the investors that agreed to buy as much as US$1.6 billion stock from Alibaba employees, people familiar with the matter said in September 2011.
Singapore’s investment firm was also among buyers when Alibaba repurchased shares from Yahoo Inc in 2012 through transactions valued at US$7.6 billion and sold them partly to existing shareholders.
The Eurovision Song Contest has seen a surge in punter interest at the bookmakers, becoming a major betting event, experts said ahead of last night’s giant glamfest in Basel. “Eurovision has quietly become one of the biggest betting events of the year,” said Tomi Huttunen, senior manager of the Online Computer Finland (OCS) betting and casino platform. Betting sites have long been used to gauge which way voters might be leaning ahead of the world’s biggest televised live music event. However, bookmakers highlight a huge increase in engagement in recent years — and this year in particular. “We’ve already passed 2023’s total activity and
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) today announced that his company has selected "Beitou Shilin" in Taipei for its new Taiwan office, called Nvidia Constellation, putting an end to months of speculation. Industry sources have said that the tech giant has been eyeing the Beitou Shilin Science Park as the site of its new overseas headquarters, and speculated that the new headquarters would be built on two plots of land designated as "T17" and "T18," which span 3.89 hectares in the park. "I think it's time for us to reveal one of the largest products we've ever built," Huang said near the
China yesterday announced anti-dumping duties as high as 74.9 percent on imports of polyoxymethylene (POM) copolymers, a type of engineering plastic, from Taiwan, the US, the EU and Japan. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s findings conclude a probe launched in May last year, shortly after the US sharply increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, computer chips and other imports. POM copolymers can partially replace metals such as copper and zinc, and have various applications, including in auto parts, electronics and medical equipment, the Chinese ministry has said. In January, it said initial investigations had determined that dumping was taking place, and implemented preliminary
Intel Corp yesterday reinforced its determination to strengthen its partnerships with Taiwan’s ecosystem partners including original-electronic-manufacturing (OEM) companies such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and chipmaker United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電). “Tonight marks a new beginning. We renew our new partnership with Taiwan ecosystem,” Intel new chief executive officer Tan Lip-bu (陳立武) said at a dinner with representatives from the company’s local partners, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the US chip giant’s presence in Taiwan. Tan took the reins at Intel six weeks ago aiming to reform the chipmaker and revive its past glory. This is the first time Tan
RSS