Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund earns over $1B from Alibaba IPO

Alibaba’s IPO late last year earned many happy investors a fortune – Yahoo, for example, raked in a massive US$9.4 billion after selling off its shares. Yesterday, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah revealed that it too made a tidy profit of more than US$1 billion in selling a part of its Alibaba holdings, according to the Financial Times.

In its financial report for 2014, Khazanah disclosed that it invested US$400 million in Alibaba in the last two years, giving it a stake of 0.6 percent. It continues to hold an undisclosed amount of shares after selling some post-IPO.

The wealth fund added that it will be increasing its investment in the US tech sector, which isn’t so surprising given its aforementioned windfall and the fact that it opened an office in San Francisco a couple of years ago.

Khazanah was not the only state-owned investment fund with the foresight to invest in the Chinese ecommerce giant. Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, as well as China Investment Corporation (CIC), had both invested in Alibaba. The former’s stake is undisclosed, while CIC reportedly paid US$2 billion to acquire a 5.6 percent stake in 2012.

(Source: Financial Times)

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