Alibaba to invest in China Business Network to expand finance services

Alibaba Group Holding's founder and chairman Jack Ma has decided buy stakes worth more than 1 billion yuan ($161 million) in financial media outlet China Business Network (CBN). CBN is part of Shanghai Media Group (SMG).

Shanghai Media Group owns TV, radio, print, and online properties.

The story of the deal was reported first by Chinese media sites Sina.com, Sohu.com and QQ.com on Wednesday.

According to Reuters, an Alibaba spokeswoman declined comment on the deal. While officials of both Shanghai Media Group and China Business Network weren't available for comment.

With the deal, China's largest e-commerce Alibaba might be able to break away from Bloomberg terminals, which provides lucrative financial data market, Quartz said.

One person privy to the deal told Quartz, that the deal will help Alibaba in seriously challenging Bloomberg in financial and economic data.

Jack Ma's aim has been to challenge the country's state-owned banks and other players in the sector. And with this deal Alibaba could strengthen its position in market.

This deal will not be the first time Alibaba's and SMG are partnering in the financial information services.

Alibaba acquire Hundsun Technologies, a provider of financial software and services n April 2014. Alibaba spent 3.3 billion yuan (US$628 million) on the deal.

And last November, Alibaba finance affiliate Ant Financial and SMG struck a deal, wherein Ant Financial and others will jointly invest 390 million yuan in Shanghai Gildata Inc. Gildata Inc, which provides business terminals, is a subsidiary of financial software firm Hundsun Technologies Inc.

Shanghai Gildata competes with Thomson Reuters Corp and Bloomberg.

The global increase in spending on financial data was estimated at 4 percent from 2013 to 2014. But spending by Chinese companies on financial data grew 16.7 percent in the same period, according to research firm IDC.