He said that the company retained US$250 million from Yahoo's injection.

Alibaba chief executive Jack Ma (3rd R) and Yahoo chief operating officer Daniel Rosensweig (2nd R) gesture during a press conference in Beijing, August 11, 2005. Yahoo Inc. will pay $1 billion for 40 percent of Chinese Web auctioneer Alibaba.com, taking on eBay and search firm Baidu.com as it extends its reach in the world's second-biggest Internet market. Photo in the background shows Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo and Jack Ma on the Great Wall. [newsphoto]

It had also pooled US$84 million before the Yahoo! acquisition.

He said the company was looking at further investments, both in talent and in other business areas, without giving details, although he said he would not be investing in online gaming.

He also noted that Yahoo! had fallen further behind Baidu.com and Google in the Chinese search market.

According to market research firm iResearch, Baidu held a 46.5 percent share of China's search engine market in 2005, compared with 36.29 in 2004.

Google held a 26.92 percent share, up from 22.72 percent in 2004.

Yahoo!'s share fell to 15.6 percent from 21.22 percent a year earlier.

Ma said that the company would be focused primarily on e-commerce for the next two to three years, although it would continue to develop Yahoo! as its search product.

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