Loaded Alibaba and Jack Ma to continue investment(3)

Internet and technology

Alibaba announced in July that it had completed the acquisition of AutoNavi Holdings Ltd after a proposal months earlier to take full control of the US-listed digital mapping company.

In May last year, Alibaba acquired 28 percent of AutoNavi's shares for $294 million. Its all-cash offer in February proposed to acquire the remaining 72 percent at $21 per American depositary share, which values AutoNavi at approximately $1.58 billion.

The deal was followed by Alibaba's announcement in June of buying remaining shares of mobile browser firm UCWeb in the biggest merger of Chinese Internet history.

In a drive for strategic expansion on mobile, the ecommerce giant previously acquired 18 percent shares of microblog platform Sina Weibo for $586 million, and undisclosed stake in Chinese online travel site Qyer.com and cloud-storage service platform Kanbox in 2013.

Consumer staples:

Yunfeng Capital and CTIC Private Equity bought a combined 60 percent stake in Chinese dairy giant Inner Mongolia Yili Industrial Group.

The shares bought in the unit are worth at least 2 billion yuan.

The ecommerce behemoth also tapped its investments into offline shopping, as Alibaba announced it had invested about 4.26 billion yuan in Intime Retail Company Limited, one of China's leading department store operators, said its latest quarterly report.

Financials:

Jack Ma's Yunxi Investment decided to buy a stake of more than 20 percent in China's financial software developer Hundsun Technologies in April. But it's only months after that Alibaba officially launched its financial arm.

Alibaba's Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co, established on Oct 16, has six entities: Alipay, China's Paypal-like third-party payment platform; Alipay Wallet, the mobile application of Alipay; Yu'e Bao, a money market fund with 570 billion yuan ($93 billion) under management as of June 30; Zhaocaibao, a third-party financial services platform; Ant Micro, a micro-loan provider; and MYBank, a private bank.

The newly approved private bank, based in Hangzhou, has registered capital of 4 billion yuan, with Zhejiang Ant Small and Micro Financial Services Group of Alibaba holding 30 percent of its shares.

In a written statement sent to China Daily, MYbank said it will use the Internet as its major means of operation and will provide financial services and products with relatively simple structures to micro and small enterprises as well as individual customers on e-commerce platforms.

Logistics:

Alibaba has invested about 1.55 billion yuan in Singapore Post Limited, the national postal provider in Singapore and logistics solution provider in Asia-Pacific, according to its latest quarterly report.

The ecommerce giant earlier last year announced to establish a 100 billion yuan logistics network that aims to make 24-hour domestic deliveries possible with industry partners.

Ma said the move would be consistent with Alibaba's long-term vision to make logistics less of a bottleneck for the fast-growing e-commerce industry.

The project, China Smart Logistic Network, is expected to be completed in four to seven years.