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"Yahoo is about to move one step closer to ending its rocky partnership with the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.\nYahoo will officially close the deal to sell back half of its 40% stake in Alibaba next week for $7.6 billion, according to Kara Swisher at AllThingsD. The deal is set to be announced next Wednesday.\nWe reached out to Yahoo for comment on the report and will update this post when we hear back.\nThe two companies first announced plans for the buyback in May. At the time, Alibaba was expected to pay as much as $7.1 billion in cash and preferred stock. According to ATD, the final deal will also see Alibaba pay Yahoo $550 million relating to its annual licensing fees to Yahoo.\nYahoo bought a 40% stake in Alibaba back in 2005 for $1 billion, providing the young company with the funding it needed to dominate China's e-commerce market. In the years since though, the two companies have clashed on some of Alibaba's business decisions.\nThe buyback deal should provide Yahoo and its new CEO Marissa Mayer will billions of dollars in extra cash to play with for potential acquisitions and investments. Meanwhile, Alibaba\u00A0is said to be looking to file for IPO sometime in the future and capitalize on its growing success in the e-commerce industry. Indeed, one of Alibaba's executives recently claimed that the company processes more sales than Amazon and eBay combined.\nImage courtesy of Flickr, codepo8"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/09/12/yahoo-alibaba-buy-back-deal-close/>