Alibaba to pay about $3.67 billion for Youku Tudou

[November 06, 2015] (Reuters) - Alibaba Group Holding Ltd agreed to buy Youku Tudou Inc, known as China's YouTube, for about $3.67 billion, slightly more it had offered in October.

Youku Tudou's American Depositary Shares were up 8.3 percent at $26.50 in premarket trading on Friday, below the e-commerce giant's offer of $27.60 per ADS.

The deal will give Alibaba access to more than half a billion online video users.

Alibaba held 18.3 percent of Youku Tudou as of Oct. 16, when it made its initial offer of $26.60 per ADS.

The new offer values the rest of Youku Tudou at $4.77 billion.

Any deal would include the $1.1 billion of cash on Youku Tudou's books, Alibaba's chief financial officer, Maggie Wu, said in October.

Based on this, Alibaba would end up paying about $3.67 billion under its revised offer.

The new offer represents a premium of 35.1 percent over Youku Tudou's closing price on Oct. 15, the companies said in a statement on Friday.

(Reporting by Anya George Tharakan and Devika Krishna Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr)
 

[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.