A relationship, Woody Allen argued, is like a shark: it must constantly move forward or it dies. What Yahoo has on its hands in Asia is a pair of dead sharks. In Japan, it has 35 per cent of Yahoo Japan, a listed joint venture with mobile phone company Softbank (37 per cent), where chairman Masayoshi Son (also president of Softbank) has been openly critical of the Californians’ strategy. In China, Yahoo has 40 per cent of Alibaba, the unlisted parent of a cluster of e-commerce businesses, where chairman Jack Ma has made concerted attempts to get it off the register. Whispers of some kind of exit for Yahoo in Japan caused the joint venture’s shares to surge on Wednesday.
伍迪?艾倫(Woody Allen)說過，愛情就像海里的鯊魚，必須不斷前進，否則就會死去。雅虎(Yahoo)在亞洲就只剩下兩條死去的鯊魚。在日本，雅虎與移動通信公司軟銀(Softbank)組建了上市合資子公司雅虎日本(Yahoo Japan)，雅虎持有35%的股權，軟銀持有37%的股權，而身兼軟銀總裁的雅虎日本董事長孫正義(Masayoshi Son)一直對加州母公司的經營策略持批評態度。在中國，雅虎持有阿里巴巴(Alibaba)40%的股權，阿里巴巴旗下聚合了眾多電子商務企業，尚未公開上市，董事長馬云(Jack Ma)曾多次試圖將雅虎從股東名單上除去。周三，有關雅虎將退出日本市場的傳言推動雅虎日本股價激增。