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"The shifting landscape of China's Internet has led to some interesting partnerships and cooperation between competitors. The founders of Tencent and Alibaba are believed to be teaming up with a Chinese insurance company on a project to provide &amp;quot;Internet financial services.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nCaixin reports that, according to sources, Jack Ma, the founder of\u00A0Alibaba Group,\u00A0and Ma Huateng, the founder of\u00A0Tencent,\u00A0have set up a joint-venture in Shanghai\u00A0with Ping An Insurance Group chairman\u00A0Ma Mingzhe.\r\n\r\nMa Mingzhe, whose company is China's second-largest life insurance provider, is believed to hold a 15 percent stake in the new venture. According to one tipster, he \u201Cwants to utilize Tencent\u2019s social networking platform and Alibaba\u2019s e-commerce database to develop Internet financial services rather than merely selling insurance.\u201D\r\n\r\nTencent has established itself as China's biggest Internet company on the strength of its QQ messaging platform, which has more than 700 million accounts, while Alibaba has taken the lead in the commerce industry with its Alibaba business-to-business website and its Taobao service, often called the Chinese eBay.\r\n\r\nWhile it's not known whether Tencent and Alibaba would be directly involved in their founders' rumored new projects, both companies have set their sights on the financial market. Alibaba already offers\u00A0some financial services, as it has run a small business loan service for its products since 2009.\u00A0In July, Tencent purchased a stake\u00A0in Caixin Media with the aim of making &amp;quot;financial news reach a broader audience.&amp;quot;\r\n\r\nAlibaba is itself in the process of raising money in order to\u00A0buy back Yahoo's stake\u00A0in it. The company is also expected to pursue plans for a US IPO in the near future.\r\n\r\nImage Credit"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/asia/2012/08/27/tencent-alibaba-founders-rumored-explore-financial-services-joint-venture/>