中国正推动风险投资离开第三方支付吗？ 财务管理专业

Is China pushing VCs out of third-party payment?Jack Ma is every bite the internet pioneer. In Alibaba.com, he created China’s leading business-to-business trading platform; Taobao swept aside eBay to become the number-one auction website; and the launch of Alipay, a third-party payment service, plugged a hole in the e-commerce market.Last year, Ma added a less savory line to his resume: he became the first Chinese CEO to break a variable interest entity (VIE) contract, the structure through which foreigners invest in certain kinds of Chinese companies.Ma’s actions, which only became public in June, were intended to offset regulatory concerns about foreign involvement in China’s third-party payment industry. He did this by transferring ownership of Alipay from Alibaba Group to a domestic firm of which he is the majority shareholder, thereby removing the subsidiary’s exposure to the VIE that secures Yahoo and Softbank’s financial interest in the parent company. The foreign firms opposed the move at board level, saying it rode roughshod over their investment agreements.This apparent violation of shareholder rights and fiduciary responsibility sets a worrying precedent for venture capital firms that have backed third-party payment providers – and also for those that invest through VIEs in general.“GPs tell LPs that there is a potential total loss scenario, which creates a wave of panic,” says Rocky Lee, managing partner for Asia at Cadwalader. “This is what gets me on the phone at 2 a.m. talking to LPs and funds in California. These guys may have 50 other portfolio companies with VIEs.”Market leaderAlipay is without question the dominant force in China’s third-party payment market, having been i...