The biggest billionaire in Russia has bought shares in big Chinese internet retailer Alibaba, after selling his stakes in US tech giants Apple and Facebook.
This comes after the West is considering imposing sanctions on Russia, that could spread from politics to business.
Alisher Usmanov, 60, a founder of Russia’s iron ore Metalloinvest holding company, has an estimated fortune of $18.6 billion as of March 2014 and is increasing his bet on China, while selling American assets.
“Chinese companies account for about 70 percent to 80 percent of the portfolio of our foreign internet investments,” Ivan Streshinskiy, head of Usmanov’s asset-management company USM Advisors LLC said.
Usmanov has sold the stake in Apple he bought for about $100 million last year, and prior to the Apple sale the Russian tycoon started a gradual sale of his 10 percent stake in Facebook he bought in 2009, when the company was valued between $6 billion and $10 billion.
Usmanov sold some of the shares in the Facebook IPO, that valued the company at $104 billion. Alibaba, the world’s second biggest internet company after Google Inc., is valued at about $200 billion posted surging sales in the three months through September, marking fourth straight quarterly profit.
Source: RT
