Billsdue on Eachnet . . . Billsdue on Sina

First EachNet

There have been rumors going around for a bit that Ebay has been trying to do a transformative deal in China. Apparently they were also trying for Alibaba last year but lost out to Yahoo.

Now there are reports that Ebay is going to sell Eachnet, its Ebay China operations, to Tom Online in a deal broadly similar to the Yahoo-Alibaba deal. The Eachnet CEO denies this report, but the guys on the ground are usually the last to know.

If you can read chinese, here is the article

then Sina

The speculation today (English, Chinese) is that Tom Online will buy out Shanda’s 19.5% stake in Sina, plus shares held by the recently departed Jiang Fengnian.

This deal would make a lot more sense the rumored Tom-Ebay deal, but the rumors that with this 20%ish stake Tom’s CEO Wang Leilei will take over Sina don’t make any sense. Tom would end up with 1-2 board seats, unless of course they decide to buy the whole company.

I believe that Shanda is willing to sell its stake in Sina, but not for less than $30 per share, still 10%+ above Sina’s current stock price. Tom is one of the few companies that could both afford to buy that stake and would be acceptable to the Chinese government. Sina is the number two news outlet in China after CCTV, and it is highly unlikely that the government would allow a foreign company to own that much of Sina.

in Chinese again . . . here . . . no idea what so ever if these rumors are true but Tom.com seems well positioned to straddle China and the West.