Big chain: An employee pushing shopping carts into Sun Art Retail Group’s Auchan hypermarket in Beijing. Sun Art already operates hundreds of hypermarkets across China under the Auchan and RT-Mart brands. — Reuters
BEIJING: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will invest about US$3.6bil to double its stake in Sun Art Retail Group Ltd, taking control of China’s largest chain of hypermarts to try and fend off rivals like JD.com Inc in e-commerce’s hottest growth arena.
Alibaba will raise its direct and indirect stake in the grocery chain to about 72% by acquiring equity from Auchan Retail International SA, then make a general offer to shareholders to buy out the rest of Sun Art. The latter’s Hong Kong-listed stock leapt as much as 30% yesterday, its biggest intraday gain since 2011. Alibaba gained as much as 1.8% to touch an intraday record.
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