据《金融时报》报道，阿里巴巴将以极大折价出售公司在美团-点评网中持有的价值10亿美元的优先股。有投资人担心，阿里巴巴折价售股的做法可能会将这家团购网站的估值压低到130亿美元左右。比起此前声称的200亿美元，如今美团-点评的估值缩水近35%。
阿里巴巴曾在美团的大股东之列，但美团10月份与腾讯支持的点评网合并让阿里感到失望。腾讯在合并公司中的股权也价值10亿美元。
现在阿里巴巴正考虑将售股所得提供给饿了么，这款点餐应用在某种程度上与美团-点评存在竞争。投资饿了么，阿里便可以进一步在中国高速增长的互联网经济中与百度、腾讯等对手竞争。
一旦用户发现优惠不再，便有改用对手服务的倾向。由于提供大幅折扣的方式未能奏效，移动互联网购物行业已经开始整合。
这使得圈地之战更加白热化，而且正有向关联行业蔓延之势。部分美团销售团队一直在私下要求一些商家放弃阿里巴巴的支付系统支付宝，而改用腾讯的类似产品。
美团本身正在要求商家与支付宝签署排它协议，而不是与数月前阿里巴巴推出的新平台口碑签约。
公司业务模式的更改也导致冲突加剧。以美团为例，该公司现正在考虑进入影片发行领域，这样就将与阿里巴巴的阿里影业竞争。这导致阿里巴巴高管对投资人说，他们认为美团创始人王兴是“忘恩负义”。在中国，每10张电影票里有4张是通过美团售出的。
然而，本土大战至少为新投资者带来了折扣。这里可能包括美国的投资基金老虎环球，以及Facebook早期投资人尤里·米尔纳(Yuri Milner)运营的风投公司Digital Sky。这些投资人现在有机会让互联网公司互相对抗，从而获得更好的条件。
但对于那些希望在美团-点评新融资中售股套现的一些现有投资人来说，这就不是什么好消息了。(维尼)
《金融时报》原文：
Alibaba hampers web rival’s fundraising
Henny Sender in Hong Kong
Alibaba is selling its $1bn of preferred shares in Meituan-Dianping, the online booking and discounts platform, at a steep discount — a move that will put a brake on the Groupon-style company’s fundraising efforts, according to investors.
Meituan-Dianping, which is backed by Alibaba’s ecommerce rival Tencent, had been seeking to raise funds from existing and new investors on terms that gave it a $15bn valuation. But some investors are concerned that Alibaba’s discounted share sale is likely to value the group-buying site at nearer $13bn.
Alibaba was once among the largest shareholders in Meituan but was disappointed by the online group’s October merger with Tencent-backed Dianping, under which with the latter ploughed another $1bn into the merged entity.
Now, Alibaba is considering funnelling the proceeds from its stake sale into Ele.me, a food delivery app that partly competes with the Meituan-Dianping — in a further attempt to take on Tencent, Baidu and other rivals in China’s fast-growing internet economy.
A rapid proliferation of mobile internet buying services has started to give way to consolidation, as the model of offering big discounts has failed to win repeat business. Customers have tended to defect once bargains are withdrawn.
This has exacerbated the turf wars, which are spilling over into adjacent industries. A few vendors have been informally asked by some Meituan sales teams to ditch Alipay, Alibaba’s payments system, in favour of Tencent’s alternative offering.
Meituan itself is asking its vendors to sign exclusivity arrangements with Alipay rather than the new Koubei platform that Alibaba launched several months ago.
Further clashes are being set up by changes to the companies’ business models. For example, Meituan, which accounts for four out of every 10 movie tickets sold in China, is now considering a move into film distribution, where it would compete with Alibaba’s Ali Pictures. That has led Alibaba executives to tell investors that they consider Wang Xing, Meituan’s founder, “ungrateful”.
However, the domestic battles may at least yield bargains for new investors in the rival online services. These potentially include Tiger Global, the US investment fund, and Digital Sky Technologies, the venture capital firm run by early Facebook-backer Yuri Milner. They now have an opportunity to play the internet companies off against each other, to secure better terms.
But that prospect is less welcome to some existing investors who committed a small amount to Meituan-Dianping’s new fundraising in the expectation of selling on their holdings and earning a fee in the process.
