Temasek and GIC buy Alibaba

Singapore's Temasek Holdings and GIC have each bought $500 million worth of Alibaba shares at a price of $74 each from Japan's Softbank. Softbank has been unloading its Alibaba shares in order to strengthen its balance sheet. While it initially wanted to raise $8.9 billion, this has since increased to $10 billion.

Alibaba is China's greatest e-commerce company listed on NYSE. Alibaba is itself buying back $2 billion of shares from Softbank at the same price of $74 per piece. 

Yahoo decides not to spin off Alibaba stake

In what is perhaps not an unexpected move, Yahoo's board has announced that it would not be pursuing the spin-off of Yahoo's close to $30billion Alibaba stake. Instead, they will now be exploring the sale of Yahoo's core business by spinning it off into a separate company.

This move comes shortly after activist shareholder, Starboard Value LP who hatched the idea of the Alibaba sale switched tact and suggested that Yahoo sell its core business instead. A lack of certainty that Yahoo would avoid taxes on the Alibaba sale is likely the main reason.

Some likely buyers include AT&T, Verizon and Alibaba. However, based on certain news sources, it seems that Alibaba might not be interested in Yahoo's core business.

Key Trade Ideas - Yahoo! Alibaba Rio Tinto

With news about the future of Yahoo! and what it will do with its stake in Alibaba, IG UK takes a technical look at both stocks.

In addition, Rio Tinto is close to 2009 levels and might offer a good trading opportunity.