The sudden firing of Carol Bartz, the hard-nosed CEO of search giant Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO), is all the talk of the tech world today, and I have no doubt the folks at Alibaba Group, who took every opportunity to bad-mouth this woman, are quietly celebrating the news. (English article) But if he’s smart, Alibaba chief Jack Ma should do more than just celebrate Bartz’s departure, and reach out to the Yahoo board to try and mend fences and even play a role in helping to choose a new CEO that can work constructively with China’s leading e-commerce company, which is 40 percent owned by Yahoo. Ma never tried to hide his animosity towards Bartz, a woman he considered brash and lacking vision, when she replaced his good friend Jerry Yang at the helm of Yahoo several years back in a bid to rescue a company that was rapidly losing ground to more nimble rival Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). Ma, through well-placed leaks to the media, made it known repeatedly over the last 2 years that he wished Yahoo would sell its stake in Alibaba, and did everything he could to line up potential buyers. But Bartz never took the bait, realizing the Alibaba stake was worth up to $10 billion, thus accounting for a large piece of Yahoo’s market cap, which now stands at $17 billion. Of course, now all the enmity is history, and Ma should take advantage of the moment to see if he can lay the foundations for a more constructive relationship by reaching out to Yahoo’s board rather than waiting for the board or eventual new CEO to come to him. Six months ago I would have said that Ma, who rightly sees himself as one of China’s earliest e-commerce visionaries, was too proud to make such a move. But after a bruising scandal earlier this year that saw him harshly criticized for his secret spin-off of Alibaba’s e-payments unit, AliPay (previous post), he appears to have become a humbler person and may even believe he’s human again! Given all the recent developments, I’d say there’s a very good chance these two partners with such a stormy past might finally be able to sit down together and forge a good new relationship that benefits everyone.
Bottom line: Alibaba’s Jack Ma has a golden opportunity to reset his relationship with Yahoo following the firing of its brash CEO, and is likely to reach out to the US company to mend fences.
雅虎(YHOO.O)突然解雇首席执行官巴茨（Carol Bartz），是今天业内的热议话题，我相信，不放过任何攻击巴茨机会的阿里巴巴集团正在暗中庆祝。但如果马云聪明的话，就不只该庆祝巴茨下课，而应采取更多行动，与雅虎董事会接触，力争改善双方关系，甚至积极帮助雅虎挑选一名能与阿里巴巴建设性合作的新掌门。雅虎持有阿里巴巴40%的股份。马云从不掩饰他对巴茨的厌恶之情。马云认为，巴茨傲慢无礼且缺乏远见。几年前，谷歌(GOOG.O)迅速抢占雅虎市场份额，马云好友杨致远当时试图力挽狂澜，而之後巴茨取代杨致远成为雅虎CEO。近两年，马云巧妙地通过媒体，多次表达希望雅虎出售阿里巴巴股份的意愿，并竭尽所能寻找潜在买家。但巴茨从未让马云如愿，因为雅虎所持有的阿里巴巴股份价值已高达100亿美元，在雅虎170亿美元市值中占很大比例。当然，这些都是过去的事了，马云应利用这次机会，与雅虎董事会进行接触，力争为一个更具建设性的合作夥伴关系奠基，而不是坐等雅虎董事会任命新的CEO。如果在六个月前，我会认为，马云自尊心太强，不屑于采取如此举措。但今年早些时候，马云秘密转让支付宝股权遭抨击後，似乎变得更谦逊，甚至令人相信他又有人情味了！鉴于上述最新进展，我敢说，雅虎和阿里巴巴有望冰释前嫌，可能终于会坐下谈判，建设新的双赢合作关系。
一句话：雅虎解雇CEO巴茨，是阿里巴巴董事长马云与雅虎关系重启的绝佳机会，马云很可能会与雅虎接触，改善双方合作关系。
Related postings 相关文章:
◙ Alibaba in Alipay Deal: Jack Ma Wins Again 支付宝股权纷争尘埃落定 马云公关赚钱两不误
◙ Tencent and Alibaba: It’s Not Easy Being Big 腾讯和阿里巴巴：想当老大不容易
◙ Alibaba, eBay Lovefest Over as eBay Rethinks China 阿里巴巴和eBay的蜜月期结束
My latest glance at the morning headlines is reconfirming for me why longtime China Mobile (HKEx: 941; NYSE: CHL) Chairman Wang Jianzhou needs to step down, the sooner the better, and hand over control of the company to bolder new leadership that can bring some excitement back to this company. At first glance, his comments that China Mobile would face difficulty but could still reach its target of 50 million 3G subscribers this year looks relatively bold and aggressive (
Well, it seems we now know at least one company that’s going to adopt Baidu’s (Nasdaq: BIDU) new mobile operating system, which it launched with fanfare last week (
history at new product development isn’t very strong. But I’ll also take this rare opportunity to break with the critics and say that Baidu’s new OS at least offers an interesting China-specific alternative to the other products on the market, as well as special access to Baidu’s market-leading search technology. Baidu has already proven that Chinese Web surfers do prefer a China-specific product to a one-size-fits-all approach like Google’s or Yahoo’s (Nasdaq: YHOO), so perhaps the same will be true for mobile Web surfing. Still, Dell is hardly a big name in the mobile Internet space, and, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone here in China using a Dell brand mobile phone or tablet PC. To succeed, Baidu will have to sign up some bigger cellphone makers in the next few months, with domestic names like ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063), Lenovo (HKEx: 992), TCL (Shenzhen 000100) and Huawei looking like the best candidates. If it can do that, and if its mobile OS proves reliable and user friendly, I would give it as high as a 50 percent chance of gaining a significant portion — perhaps up to 15 or 20 percent — of China’s mobile OS market.
The central government was sending mixed signals about its future plans for electric vehicles (EVs) at an auto event over the weekend, on the one hand tightening current incentives for EV sales but at the same time saying it is studying more measures to boost the struggling program. What this tells me is that China’s ambitious program to put 1 million EVs on the road by 2015 is in a state of disarray, with few such vehicles on the road today despite lots of government talk. Let’s review the latest developments, which saw one Finance Ministry official at the event in Tianjin saying fuel efficiency standards were being raised for EVs to qualify for a government subsidy of 3,000 yuan per vehicle, meaning less cars will now qualify in the program. (
Eight months after the news first broke, we’re finally getting a little more color on the potentially devastating lawsuit filed against telecoms equipment and cellphone maker ZTE (HKEx: 763; Shenzhen: 000063) by global rival Ericsson (Stockholm: ERICb), and things don’t look as bad as they did initially. Few details were given when Ericsson filed the suit in Britain back in April, but the action had the potential to halt ZTE’s sales in major European markets. (
Shanda Interactive (Nasdaq: SNDA) has just reported some of its most unimpressive results ever, with a core video game business that looks like a zombie and an online video unit that looks even scarier. The bottom line is that Shanda saw its second-quarter profit plunge 95 percent amid stiff competition and few compelling offerings in two of its core business, its online game unit operated by Shanda Games (Nasdaq: GAME) and its struggling video sharing business operated by Ku6 Media (Nasdaq: KUTV). (
It’s quite a slow news day as we head into the final days of summer before the new school year begins, so I thought I’d dust off my “China Makes Up Its Mind” column with a discussion of much-needed reform of China’s penality system for companies that break the law. Not surprisingly, the calls for reform, while still somewhat muted, are coming in response to violations by a foreign company, in this case US oil giant ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP), whose leaking oil wells are causing potentially devastating damage in the Bohai Bay off the coast of Shandong province. Under the current system, ConocoPhillips will face maximum fine of 200,000 yuan, or a mere $31,000, for this environmental nightmare that has caused much more damage to the environment and people’s livelihoods. (
