Alibaba Acquires Controlling Stake in Sun Art
19.10.2020 03:05:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA and HKEX: 9988, “Alibaba” or “Alibaba Group”) today announced it will invest approximately USD3.6 billion in respect of Sun Art Retail Group Limited (HKEX: 6808, “Sun Art”), a leading hypermarket and supermarket operator in China, that will raise its aggregate direct and indirect stake to approximately 72%1. This transaction demonstrates Alibaba’s continued commitment to Sun Art, and its New Retail strategy by further integrating online and offline resources in China’s retail sector.
As part of the transaction, Alibaba will acquire 70.94% of equity interest in A-RT Retail Holdings Limited (“A-RT”) from Auchan Retail International S.A. and its subsidiary (“Auchan Retail”) valued at approximately HKD28.0 billion (USD3.6 billion). A-RT holds approximately 51% of the equity interest in Sun Art. Following the transaction, Alibaba will consolidate Sun Art in its financial statements. Additionally, Peter Huang has been appointed Chairman of Sun Art in addition to his current role as Chief Executive Officer.
Daniel Zhang, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Group, said: “Alibaba’s strategic investment in Sun Art in 2017 was an important step in our New Retail strategy. The alliance we formed with Auchan Retail and Ruentex was instrumental in building a robust infrastructure to create opportunities and value in China’s retail sector. Led by Chief Executive Officer Peter Huang, Sun Art has achieved impressive results in its digitalization, and pursued promising synergies with businesses across the Alibaba digital economy. As the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating the digitalization of consumer lifestyles and enterprise operations, this commitment to Sun Art serves to strengthen our New Retail vision and serve more consumers with a fully integrated experience.”
In November 2017, Alibaba Group, Auchan Retail and Ruentex Group announced a strategic alliance to digitalize and introduce New Retail solutions at Sun Art stores, including omnichannel integration and a more personalized customer experience. Over the past three years, Sun Art has made significant progress in the digital transformation under a fast-changing market environment by leveraging resources and technology from the Alibaba ecosystem, to capitalize on the growth opportunities in China’s hypermarket and supermarket space.
Today, all Sun Art physical stores in China have been integrated into Alibaba’s Taoxianda and Tmall Supermarket platforms, providing one-hour and half-day on-demand delivery through deep collaboration with other key businesses across the Alibaba ecosystem, including Ele.me and Cainiao, offering consumers greater product selection and access. As of June 30, 2020, Sun Art operates 481 hypermarkets and 3 mid-size supermarkets in China, with a focus on strengthening its position through small and offline community stores.
About Alibaba Group
Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba and that it will be a good company that lasts for 102 years.
1Including the stake held by Alibaba Group and its related party.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201018005074/en/
Contact information
Ivy Ke
Alibaba Group
+852 5590 9949
Ivy.ke@alibaba-inc.com
Cathy Yan
Alibaba Group
+852 9012 5806
cathy.yan@alibaba-inc.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Announces the Initiation of a Comprehensive Public Debt Restructuring Process13.5.2026 23:08:00 EEST | Press release
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela announces today its decision to initiate a comprehensive restructuring of its external public debt obligations. CONTEXT & RATIONALE Over the past decade, Venezuela's economy has been severely impacted by external shocks – from the end of the commodity super-cycle to foreign sanctions and COVID-19 – resulting in a sharp economic contraction, a protracted default since 2017, and a ballooning of public sector liabilities. The country nonetheless possesses a strong economic potential, including unique hydrocarbon and mineral endowments. A recovery is underway, and Venezuela is committed to accelerating it through a comprehensive reform agenda in support of growth, fiscal sustainability, monetary stabilization, and enhanced governance. Restoring public debt sustainability is central to this agenda: the current debt overhang constrains external financing, limits public investment capacity, and prevents full re-engagement with the international financial s
Boomi Announces Intent to Acquire Lunar.dev to Deliver Governed Agent Connectivity Across the Enterprise13.5.2026 22:00:00 EEST | Press release
Boomi, the data activation company for AI, today announced it has signed a letter of intent to acquire Lunar.dev, an innovator in AI and MCP gateway. The proposed acquisition is expected to enrich the Boomi Enterprise Platform and Boomi Connect with advanced capabilities to govern and scale AI usage across enterprise systems. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513850557/en/ Boomi Announces Intent to Acquire Lunar.dev to Deliver Governed Agent Connectivity Across the Enterprise As organizations move from AI experimentation to production, controlling how agents and AI applications interact with LLMs at scale has become critical. Lunar.dev addresses this need with an AI gateway that delivers granular, policy-driven control over AI interactions, with the visibility, security, and performance required for enterprise environments. These capabilities enable organizations to move from pilot to production with confiden
BeOne Medicines’ BEQALZI ™ (sonrotoclax) Approved by U.S. FDA as First and Only BCL2 Inhibitor for R/R Mantle Cell Lymphoma13.5.2026 20:27:00 EEST | Press release
BeOne Medicines Ltd. (“BeOne”) (Nasdaq: ONC; HKEX: 06160; SSE: 688235), a global oncology company, today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted accelerated approval to BEQALZI™(bee-KAHL-zee; sonrotoclax), a foundational, next-generation BCL2 inhibitor, for the treatment of adult patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) mantle cell lymphoma (MCL), after at least two lines of systemic therapy, including a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor. BEQALZI was designed to enhance BCL2 inhibition—with greater potency, selectivity, and a pharmacologic profile with potential to improve efficacy, tolerability, and convenience over others in the class. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513542161/en/ BeOne Medicines' flagship U.S. biologics manufacturing and clinical R&D facility at the Princeton West Innovation Campus in Hopewell, N.J. Michael Wang, M.D., Global Principal Investigator
Boomi Unveils Innovations That Power the Agentic Enterprise13.5.2026 17:30:00 EEST | Press release
Boomi, the data activation company for AI, today announced a major expansion of the Boomi Enterprise Platform at Boomi World 2026, introducing new capabilities across orchestrated agentic workflows, agentic engineering, governed agent connectivity, grounded agent context, and localized agent infrastructure. Together, these innovations are designed to power the agentic enterprise — where agents and humans work together to drive action and operationalize AI at scale. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513996223/en/ Boomi Unveils Innovations That Power the Agentic Enterprise The enterprise has reached a defining moment as AI becomes the primary interface for work and MCP emerges as the new standard. While the shift toward a headless, agentic enterprise is inevitable, this vision is colliding with skyrocketing cloud costs and trapped data. For many, layering agents onto a fragmented landscape only magnifies govern
Boomi and Couchbase Partner to Power Enterprise AI Agents with Trusted Recollection, Connectivity, and Governance13.5.2026 17:30:00 EEST | Press release
Boomi, the data activation company for AI, and Couchbase, Inc., the operational data platform for AI, today announced a partnership through which the two companies are collaborating closely to accelerate AI pilots to production. The companies will co-engineer solutions that give customers a production-ready foundation for agentic AI, combining Boomi's connectivity, runtime, and governance for AI agents with Couchbase's scalable recollection and vector capabilities. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260513350337/en/ Enterprises deploying AI agents today face a common challenge: while agents perform well in pilots, they struggle to scale due to inconsistent access to trusted context, recollection, and real-time business data. Lack of governance, auditability, and operational control drives up compute costs while diminishing productivity and revenue. “2026 is the year organizations move from AI experimentation to a
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom