How true is the rumor spreading that Jack Ma and the Alibaba Group is harnessing resources to be a front runner to bid for the acquisition of search giant, Yahoo?  Reports have mentioned that a crowd of private equity investors have recently approached Ma to determine if he is indeed attracted to the idea of buying out Yahoo. The undisclosed source added that Ma has yet to make any decisions regarding this matter as it is deemed sensitive and the stakes are too high to crack up hastily.

However, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Nomura stated that, “It was an inevitable thing that Alibaba would get involved. What we do question is whether Yahoo’s stake will go from 40 to zero or 40 to a much smaller number. … There are a lot of moving parts to this.”

In an article we discussed how it was AOL which has been partly vocal about this acquisition issue. Rumor has dropped the name of Bank America as the financial institution that is currently being tapped by AOL to aid them in their quest to bid for Yahoo!. AOL is trying to revive its business after posting major losses last year. With this, buying out Yahoo! has remained atop of their list.

Going back to Alibaba, Yahoo! still owns 40% of the company’s stake. The two companies have enjoyed a great relationship since 2005, when Yahoo! bought stake of the Hong Kong based parent company, Alibaba.com Ltd. That year, the latter has a registered value of just $1 billion. Today, their total worth rose up to $10 billion.

At this point, the same source has declared that Yahoo! has not entered in any agreement with any organizations or invited anyone to buy them out. What is crystal clear right now is that Yahoo! has stronger affiliations in Asia; with its Japan arm reaches a stake of $7 billion and the continued success of China’s largest e-Commerce business, Alibaba.