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
Airship Announces Results Guarantee; Releases Commissioned Study Finding 476% ROI for Composite Organization22.7.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Airship, the mobile-first customer experience platform leader, today announced its Airship Results Guarantee, a corporate commitment to achieve predetermined business outcomes for new customers. Concurrently, the company released the results of a separate, commissioned Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Airship, July 2026. The study found that a composite organization based on interviewed customers achieved a 476% Return on Investment (ROI) with a payback period of less than six months. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260722832535/en/ Airship has launched a new results guarantee offer to stand behind its value. Alongside this offer, the team shared the results of a new Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study commissioned with Forrester Consulting illustrating that a composite organization achieved a 476% ROI with a payback period of less than six months. “We introduced
Arrakis Comes out of Stealth With $38M to Help Industrial Enterprises Compete in the AI Era22.7.2026 16:56:00 EEST | Press release
Arrakis, the AI deployment company helping industrial companies install AI agents for mission-critical operations, today announced a $30 million Series A led by Blossom Capital, with participation from existing investor Accel, which also led the company's $7.5 million seed round. The round brings total funding to around $38 million and includes backing from prominent technology leaders, including Olivier Pomel, founder and chief executive of Datadog, Olivier Godement, OpenAI’s Head of business products and Junaid Hussein, founder of Cambridge Aerospace. Founded in January 2026 by former Accel investor Rafael Quintanilla, together with co-founders Haroun Beltaifa, Romain Fouilland and Mikhail Galkov - alumni of Palantir, DeliveryHero, Revolut, Datadog and ASML - Arrakis helps industrial companies deploy AI into core operational workflows across aerospace, energy, logistics, manufacturing, construction and telecommunications markets. Across the US and Europe, governments and businesses a
Vultr and AMD Support the University of Cambridge's TESSERA AI Project to Accelerate Global Environmental Monitoring22.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Vultr, the world’s largest privately-held cloud infrastructure company, and AMD, a leader in high-performance and AI computing, have announced their support for the University of Cambridge's Energy & Environment Group in developing TESSERA, a groundbreaking AI foundation model designed to monitor environmental change internationally at unprecedented scale. Vultr is providing the computational infrastructure, based on AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators, necessary to generate global embeddings covering Earth's land surface from 2017 to 2025, enabling applications in agriculture, biodiversity conservation, and renewable energy infrastructure monitoring. The collaboration represents a significant advancement in applying artificial intelligence to planetary conservation challenges. TESSERA processes data from European Space Agency Sentinel satellites to create detailed embeddings - compressed AI representations - of every 10-meter square of Earth's surface. TESSERA represents the most accurat
Omilia Appoints Ryan Kam as Chief Marketing Officer to Lead Global Brand and Growth Strategy22.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Omilia, a global leader in Self-Learning Agentic CX, today announced the appointment of Ryan Kam as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Ryan will be responsible for Omilia's global brand, demand generation, and marketing strategy as the company scales its go-to-market presence across enterprise markets. In his new role, Kam will own Omilia's global marketing function, spanning brand strategy, demand generation, product marketing, analyst relations and communications. He joins at a moment of significant commercial momentum: Omilia has seen accelerating enterprise demand across all industries and is investing in a marketing engine built to match the pace of its growth. Ryan Kam brings more than 20 years of marketing leadership across some of the most recognized names in enterprise technology. Most recently, he served as CMO at Egnyte, a leader in cloud content security and governance. Prior to that, Kam held the CMO role at LogicMonitor, where he drove growth for one of the leading infrastruc
Echodyne Announces ATAK Integration for MESA® Radar Platform22.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Echodyne, the radar platform company, today announced the availability of an Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK) plugin for its MESA® radar platform. The integration enables users to configure, control, and visualize data from Echodyne radars within the ATAK environment, supporting military, public safety, and security operations that rely on TAK for shared situational awareness. The plugin extends radar management and visualization capabilities to ATAK users, allowing high-fidelity radar data and system controls to be accessed through a familiar operational interface. By integrating radar data into existing TAK workflows, organizations can streamline deployment, reduce operator workload, and improve access to real-time situational awareness. TAK is a government-developed geospatial platform used across U.S. military, federal, state, and local government organizations, as well as by U.S. partner nations. According to the U.S. Army TAK Product Center, the TAK ecosystem supports 15 Departm
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