Alibaba Group (BABA) and its online financial services affiliate Ant Financial Services Group announced Tuesday that they have completed a previously announced restructuring between the two companies. The restructuring was announced in September as part of Alibaba’s IPO prospectus. At the time, Alibaba agreed to sell its small- and medium-enterprise (SME) loan business and other related services to Ant Financial. That transaction is now complete.
Alibaba Group (BABA) is forging a much stronger connection to China’s fast-growing smartphone market. China’s largest online and mobile commerce services company late Sunday said it has to agreed to invest $590 million for a minority stake in Meizu, a leading smartphone manufacturer in China. As part of the deal, Alibaba will provide Meizu with help in boosting the company’s smartphone ecosystem in the areas of e-commerce, mobile Internet, mobile
While Amazon.com (AMZN) waits to get permission from the U.S. government to test delivery drones, its counterpart in China has beaten it to the air. Alibaba’s (BABA) major online marketplace, Taobao, has partnered with the Shanghai YTO Express delivery service to run a three-day test program. Taobao plans to deliver by drone a brand of ginger tea to 450 customers from Wednesday through Friday this week, Tech In Asia reported. The ginger tea is used to treat menstrual cramps. Customers must live within a certain radius of distribution sites in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, Tech In Asia said. The packages will be delivered within an hour, Taobao said. A video on the Taobao website shows a small quadcopter making a delivery to an online customer. Amazon first revealed its drone delivery aspirations on Black Friday 2013. It’s testing unmanned aerial vehicles for the delivery of goods…