SHAREHOLDERS can be such nuisances. This week the Alibaba group, China’s biggest internet firm, announced that it wants to delist the shares of Alibaba.com, its business-to-business arm, that are traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange. The company, and its founder and chairman, Jack Ma (pictured), made no attempt to sugar-coat the decision.One big motivation for delisting, the parent company said, is to have the freedom to run its offshoot “free from the pressure of market expectations, earnings visibility and share price fluctuations.” It also admitted that its slumping share price had been causing problems inside the company: “A depressed share price may continue to adversely impact?employee morale,” it said.The deal, which will set Alibaba back $2.3 billion, looks likely to succeed. One reason to think so is the hefty premium on offer. A bit over a quarter of Alibaba.com’s shares are publicly traded, and the firm is offering those unhappy shareholders HK$13.50 ($1.74) per share. That matches the offer price of the firm’s initial public offering in 2007, and is roughly 46% higher than the last closing price two weeks ago, when trading in the firm’s shares were halted.Another reason for shareholders to cash in may be that the division’s immediate commercial prospects look dim. The web portal is still recovering from a corruption scandal and has endured a backlash among …

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TODAY, the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirted with the 13,000 level, prompting lots of people across a number of different media to talk about how the Dow was flirting with the 13,000 level. Of course, there’s no real meaning to the 13,000 level; people just like big, round numbers, and so discussion about how the Dow had returned to this particular level (the last close above 13,000 occurred in May of 2008) seemed somehow more justified than discussion of the index’s attainment of, say, the all-important 12,578 level. A focus on big, round numbers is a little silly.Twitter overflowed, however, with a different sort of disdain: Dow-hating. Matt Yglesias captured the sentiment:With the Dow Jones Industrial Average back over 13,000 it’s worth emphasizing that not only is the stock market different from the economy and an index of 30 large firms different from the stock market, but the Dow is constructed in an absurd manner. Specifically, it’s an average of 30 different stocks that’s what we call price-weighted. That means that if Acme, Inc has 1 million shares outstanding each worth $4 and Genericorp has 2 million shares outstanding each worth $2 you average them out to a price of $3. In a properly constructed index, what you need to do is weight by total market capitalization and see that Acme, Inc. and Genericorp are the same. Doing the weighting the way the Dow does it …

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UK Only Article:  standard article Issue:  A way out of the woods Fly Title:  Insider trading in Congress Rubric:  Congressmen may still be able to escape prosecution Location:  NEW YORK Main image:  Mr Bachus has questions to answer Mr Bachus has questions to answer AT LAST they can agree on something. On February 9th, in a spirit of bipartisanship that is rare these days, the House passed a bill making it explicit that members of Congress are not allowed to engage in insider trading and get away with it. The Senate had already passed a similar bill the week before, and Barack Obama has promised to sign it into law. A “60 Minutes” episode that aired on CBS in November, detailing the improper trading of some congressmen, sparked public outrage. Suddenly the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which had attracted little support since it was first introduced in 2006, became as popular as Facebook’s initial …

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UK Only Article:  standard article Issue:  How to set Syria free Fly Title:  Corporate governance Rubric:  The Rothschild-Bakrie marriage hits the rocks Location:  JAKARTA AND LONDON IN AN early episode of “Sergeant Bilko”, a 1950s TV comedy, the eponymous hero rents an empty store. His fellow soldiers, convinced that the army’s “smartest operator” sees a business opportunity, beg to be made partners. Not all do well out of the deal. Nat Rothschild also has a name that inspires confidence among investors. The scion of a European banking dynasty (some of whose members own stakes in The Economist), Mr Rothschild raised £707m ($1.08 billion) to create his own empty store, a London-listed “cash shell” named Vallar. He then used the cash to buy stakes in two coal-mining ventures in Indonesia associated with the Bakrie group, a family-owned conglomerate. Bumi PLC, the British-based company that emerged with Mr Rothschild as co-chairman, appealed to cautious punters who might otherwise have shied away from risky …

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ONLINE coupons that give customers discounts on all sorts of things, from cup cakes to gym subscriptions, have helped turn Groupon into a dotcom giant that notched up $1.6 billion of revenue last year. But in future, investors may want to apply a discount of their own to the company’s financial forecasts. On February 8th the company announced its first ever set of public quarterly results, covering the last three months of 2011. Instead of making a profit, as had been widely expected, it revealed a $43m loss.

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The social media giant is finally opening its doors to public investorsAFTER eight years, scores of lawsuits and a blockbuster movie, Facebook is going public. It is seeking to raise $5 billion from its initial public offering, which would give it an an estimated market capitalisation of $80-100 billion—similar to that of fast-food chain McDonald’s. The social network employs only around 3,000 staff, giving it an average revenue of $1.2m per person in 2011. Analysts are quick to point out that the site’s users effectively act as employees, adding content and value for others. Its actual staff and private investors stand to make a small fortune from the floatation. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder and CEO, owns a 28% stake, which will be worth about $28 billion. Facebook’s value is largely derived from its ability to hone adverts to the specific interests of its users. Someone who posts a lot of comments about, say, an engagement, can expect to see more ads for caterers and wedding dresses.

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The social media giant is finally opening its doors to public investorsAFTER eight years, scores of lawsuits and a blockbuster movie, Facebook is going public. It is seeking to raise $5 billion from its initial public offering, which would give it an estimated market capitalisation of $80-100 billion—similar to that of fast-food chain McDonald’s. The social network employs only around 3,000 staff, giving it an average revenue of $1.2m per person in 2011. Analysts are quick to point out that the site’s users effectively act as employees, adding content and value for others. Its actual staff and private investors stand to make a small fortune from the flotation. Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder and CEO, owns a 28% stake, which will be worth about $28 billion. Facebook’s value is largely derived from its ability to hone adverts to the specific interests of its users. Someone who posts a lot of comments about, say, an engagement, can expect to see more ads for caterers and wedding dresses.

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UK Only Article:  standard article Issue:  A fistful of dollars Fly Title:  Floating Facebook Rubric:  Facebook is likely to become a gargantuan company. That will bring risks as well as rewards Location:  SAN FRANCISCO Main image:  20120204_FBD001_0.jpg MARK ZUCKERBERG, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has talked for years about the notion of a “social graph” which connects people to their friends and all of the things they are interested in. By encouraging hundreds of millions of people to share their deeds and reveal their innermost thoughts, profane or profound, online, his company has in effect mapped a portion of this graph on its computers. According to the Onion, a satirical publication, the whole thing was the CIA’s idea; digging up this amount of information the old-fashioned way would have cost the spooks a fortune. These billions of electronic nodes and links will soon make a fortune for Mr Zuckerberg, …

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FACEBOOK may announce its IPO, Twitter takes heat for new censorship rules and Apple continues to dominate  

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UK Only Article:  standard article Issue:  The rise of state capitalism Fly Title:  Buttonwood Rubric:  How executives spend their company’s cash Main image:  20120121_FND002_0.jpg IT IS easy to accept that small investors might be irrational—piling into dotcom stocks in late 1999, for example, or buying half-built Miami condominiums in 2006. But corporate executives are supposed to be “in the know”. That, after all, is why there are such stringent laws against insider dealing. Take share buy-backs. Investors often see a decision by a company to buy back its own shares as a positive indicator. If the executives think the shares are a bargain, everyone else should. In this sectionLosing altitude »Not so smart Volunteers wanted Vienna 2.0 Two twists in the dragon’s tail iPadded The hangover ReprintsRelated topicsBuybacks Business Stockmarkets Dividends Financial markets But are executives any good at market timing? Not according to the calculations of Andrew …

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