Alibaba has joined Chinese local government and other corporate backers in a $1.4bn investment in Suning, the latest attempt to save the country’s biggest bricks-and-mortar retailer and owner of Inter Milan.
The deal leaves billionaire Zhang Jindong without a controlling stake in the formerly expansive group he founded in 1990, after he became tangled in a complex web of cross investments with other tycoons.
Suning “will be in a state of no controlling shareholder and no actual controller”, the company said.
Under the arrangement Zhang and interests linked to him and his family will transfer 17 per cent of the Shenzhen-listed group’s shares to a state fund in Jiangsu, the province where Suning is based.
Suning’s restructuring this week reflects Beijing’s new strategy of deploying private companies alongside state lenders to bail out debt-laden conglomerates in a bid to soften the risks from financial instability and job losses.
No detail was given on the…