US fund to sell Alibaba's dollar-denominated equity shares

NEW YORK - US management investment firm Altaba announced Wednesday that it will commence selling the American Depositary Shares (ADSs) of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba on May 20.

Altaba plans to sell the ADSs through open market transactions and/or through private dispositions that are not executed or recorded on a public exchange or quotation service.

An ADS is a US dollar-denominated equity share of a foreign-based company issued in the United States for purchase on a US stock exchange.

The amount and pricing of the ADSs remain unstated. Yet the fund said it currently plans to update stockholders weekly online on the actual amount of shares sold.

The New York City-based fund has previously disclosed that it intends to sell a minimum number of Alibaba's ADSs to ensure that it has adequate liquid assets to cover a maximum potential reserves estimated by the fund's board of directors (the board).

That's because the reserves might be required by relevant authorities to satisfy the fund's "known, contingent, and potential future liabilities," it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The fund is capable of selling up to 100 percent of the Alibaba's ADSs it holds. However, it won't sell more than half of the ADSs before getting an approval from stockholders of a plan it previously submitted.

The plan aims to increase the price per share, at which the fund trades relative to the then-current value of Altaba's underlying assets, according to its statement on April 2.

Already approved by the board, the plan is currently scheduled to be voted on by the fund's stockholders at a special meeting to be held on June 27.

Altaba was created from Yahoo! Inc after US telecommunications conglomerate Verizon acquired Yahoo's operating businesses. The remains of Yahoo was renamed Altaba on June 16, 2017.

The fund's assets primarily account for a large position in Alibaba.