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Yahoo still retains its 40% stake in the unlisted Alibaba Group, but its relinquishment of shares in the e-commerce subsidiary Alibaba.com. There was speculation in the blogosphere that this maybe a sign that either Yahoo has a weak outlook on the Chinese online shopping sector but I am guessing this maybe more basic and it is potentially a souring of the relationship with Alibaba.

We have posted a number of stories about Alibaba.com over the past month of so and the company is certainly doing some restructuring and reorganizing. Just look at the post on the merging of the lifestyle website, Yahoo Koubei into the Internet shopping platform Taobao.com.

In June 2008, CEO of Alibaba Jack Ma announced the merger of China Yahoo and Koubei.com and renamed the company as Yahoo Koubei. Yahoo Koubei focused on development lifestyle-related e-commerce, community and communication services. However, one year after the integration, China Yahoo will be split from Koubei.com and will re-focus on its email, content, and search services.

Further, our posts in this community have highlighted a series of personnel changes. Wang Shuai, vice president of Alibaba, was appointed general manager of China Yahoo; Jin Jianhang, former general manager of China Yahoo, would be transferred back to the group to assist the work of Ma; and Zhang Yu, vice president of Alibaba Group and general manager for Taobao.com's consumer business department, would be new general manager of Koubei.com.

Alibaba is always a great company to watch as they really are a poster child Chinese company in showing how a firm can be agile, flexible and at times, harsh in demonstrating their willingness to impose corporate change.