Markets ended a turbulent quarter on sour note, whit shares falling sharply amid investors growing despair about effort to deal with the challenges facing the world economy.

And with the protests going on Investors are beginning to see how shakey the ground really is.

The whole system is on the verge of collapse. The worst part is howe our congress insists on waqsting time with endless debate and committees. They are too far out of touch.

Yes.

Buffett's words twisted on taxes.

Jack Ma, the CEO of Chinese Internet conglomerate Alibaba Group, said late Friday that his company would be "interested" in buying all of struggling online media firm Yahoo.

A spokesman for Alibaba confirmed that Ma made that comment in response to a question following Ma's keynote address at the China 2.0 conference at Stanford University.

Shares of Yahoo rose 3% in after hours trading Friday. A spokesperson for Yahoo said the company had no comment about Ma's remarks.

Yahoo is holding a press conference in New York Monday. Ross Levinsohn, the executive vice president of Yahoo's Americas region, is speaking. But Yahoo has given no indication as to what the topic of the press conference will be.

Yahoo currently owns about a 40% stake in Alibaba, but the relationship between these two partners has been contentious as of late. A purchase of Yahoo would essentially allow Ma to buy back control of that stake.

Former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Ma had a dispute over ownership of Alipay, an online payment unit similar to eBay-owned PayPal. In May, Yahoo disclosed that Alibaba shifted 100% ownership of Alipay to a new entity controlled by Ma.

That news caused a huge slide in shares of Yahoo since many investors had felt that a main reason to own Yahoo was the hope that it would be able to cash in on its stake in Alipay as well as other Alibaba-owned assets such as online commerce site Taobao.

Although Yahoo, Alibaba and Softbank, a Japanese Internet firm that is also an investor in Alibaba, reached a deal over Alipay ownership in July, Yahoo investors remained frustrated. Bartz was fired in September.

Bartz was widely credited for cutting costs at Yahoo in order to preserve profits. But she was never able to turn around the company's sagging sales.

Despite a search partnership with Microsoft, Yahoo continued to lose ground to search king Google. Social network Facebook has emerged as a fierce competitor for so-called online display (i.e. graphic and video) advertising as well.







Home | Go To Top

Companies | Technology | Jobs | Small Business | Real Estate | Autos | Personal Finance | Fortune | Money | Video

About CNNMoney.com | Privacy Policy

© 2010 Cable News Network, Inc.
A Time Warner Company.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.