SoftBank Group of Japan holds 34.4%; Yahoo holds 22.6%; Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma holds 8.9%; Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai holds 3.6%.

Alibaba submitted an IPO (initial public offering) application to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on May 6, 2014 (US time). The prospectus submitted by Alibaba shows that SoftBank of Japan holds 34.4% of the shares, making it the largest shareholder, and Jack Ma holds 8.9% of the shares, making him the largest individual shareholder.

The prospectus disclosed in detail: SoftBank Group of Japan holds 797,742,980 shares, accounting for 34.4%; Yahoo holds 523,565,416 shares, accounting for 22.6%; Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma holds 206,100,673 shares, accounting for 8.9%; Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai holds 83,499,896 shares, accounting for 3.6%.

Extended information

The board structure proposed by Alibaba is a more extreme form than the current board structure prevalent in the United States.

In the United States, Internet companies and social networking companies have been adopting a dual election mechanism to strengthen the status of corporate founders. Similar to cooperative groups, such innovative companies often promote certain valuable values, and their boards of directors are often not sound enough to cope with strategic management challenges.

In addition, another common feature is that such companies may pursue "long-termism" and have little anxiety about the pressure of the capital market.

However, there are some very important differences.

Human capital is crucial to the high-tech industry in the United States. As for financial capital, there is almost no need for them to exist except to use equity as a "currency" when distributing dividends or acquiring other companies. The largest technology companies often hold a lot of cash.