Jack Ma Keen to Buy Yahoo Despite Yang Rebuff

Alibaba founder and CEO Jack Ma wants to buy Yahoo and has begun discussions with other potential buyers despite Jerry Yang’s insistence that Yahoo is not for sale.

Ma told the audience at Stanford’s recent China 2.0 conference that he wants to buy the struggling Yahoo in its entirety, not just the 40% stake it owns in Alibaba, the B2B e-commerce site he founded in 1999.

“We are probably one of the very few companies that really understand Yahoo USA very well,” said Ma.

Ma’s relationship with Yang began in 2005 when Yahoo took a 40% stake in Alibaba for $1 billion. In November of 2010 Ma sought to engineer a management buy-back of that stake by assembling a group of private equity firms to finance it. By that time Yahoo’s stake in Ma’s company was estimated to be worth around $4 billion. Ma’s sense of urgency in buying back Alibaba shares was likely fueled by Yahoo’s languishing share prices which made it an increasingly attractive takeover target.

Ma’s attempt at buying back Alibaba shares was rebuffed by Carol Bartz who was then Yahoo CEO. She was fired in late September and the Yahoo board is currently seeking a new CEO and has hired Allen & Co for help strategize the company’s future. Meanwhile Ma will begin his efforts to engineer a buyout of Yahoo itself with a planned visit to the Bay Area.

His efforts may be welcomed by many Yahoo investors who have become discouraged by the company’s prospects as it keeps losing market share and seems to lack any clear strategy for reversing the slide.

“It’s more complicated than we thought,” said Ma of his efforts to buy out Yahoo. “There’s so many people interested in that. And we are also talking to them and they are talking to us. I cross my fingers, just to say we are very, very interested.”

Yahoo founder Jerry Yang still holds a 4.8 percent stake worth $2.1 billion and co-founder and close Yang freind David Filo owns a 6.4 percent stake worth $2.8 billion. Yang has declared that Yahoo is not for sale but analysts believe it’s only a matter of time before a buyer manages to acquire a controlling interest with a tender offer due to the number of investors who have become discouraged by Yahoo’s prospects.

Jack Ma is seen as one of China’s most powerful and effective entrepreneurs. Not only has Alibaba become one of the world’s biggest B2B online marketplaces, but his consumer auction site Taobao.com is booming as well.