What's Up with the Alibaba Group?

The Alibaba Group (NYSE: BABA) continues a process of shapeshifting. In the wake of a major restructuring that will make its cloud service arm an autonomous company, it’s come to light that Japanese tech giant SoftBank has relinquished most of its holdings in the Chinese technology conglomerate.

SoftBank Group once held over 30% of Alibaba Group shares but started to unload its stake a couple of years ago. In August 2022, for instance, SoftBank reduced its holdings in Alibaba from 23.7% to 14.6%. And news sources citing the Financial Times recently reported that SoftBank has lowered its stake to just 3.8% by unloading $7.2 billion worth of prepaid future contracts.

SoftBank has stated that it’s shifting away from investment losses in order to focus on a planned IPO for Arm Ltd., the chip design giant that SoftBank nearly sold to NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA) last year.

A Government Turnaround?

In other news, Alibaba shares recently rose on news from Reuters that the Chinese government will be reducing the amount of a fine levied on the Ant Group, a financial services company in which Alibaba has roughly a 33% stake.