Alibaba Health Delays Completion Date for Acquisition of Tmall Online Pharmacy Business and Files Updated Prospectus

On January 4, Alibaba Health announced that the closing date for its acquisition of Tmall’s online pharmaceutical business would be postponed to March 31, 2016.

According to the announcement by Alibaba Health, the company entered into a share purchase agreement with Ali JK Investment (a subsidiary affiliated with the Alibaba Group) and Chen Wenxin on April 8, 2015. The proposed acquisition is subject to the fulfillment of various conditions precedent set forth in the agreement, including obtaining necessary regulatory approvals. If any of the aforementioned conditions precedent are not fulfilled by December 31, 2015, or such later date as may be agreed in writing between the Company and the sellers, the agreement shall automatically terminate immediately in accordance with its terms.



The announcement stated that the board of directors of Alibaba Health and Ali JK Investment had agreed to extend the final deadline for the acquisition from December 31, 2015, to March 31, 2016, or a later date mutually agreed upon by both parties.

In April 2015, Alibaba Group announced that it had reached a final agreement with Alibaba Health to transfer the operating rights of Tmall’s online pharmaceutical business to Alibaba Health in exchange for increasing its stake in the latter to approximately 53%, thereby making it a subsidiary of Alibaba. The capital involved in injecting Alibaba’s Tmall pharmaceutical business into Alibaba Health amounted to HK$19.448 billion.

The core segment of Tmall Medicine Online is the Tmall Medicine Hall. Currently, 201 online pharmacies are listed on the Tmall Medicine Hall. As of December 31, 2015, a total of 388 enterprises had obtained licenses for operating online pharmacies (some of these enterprises have not yet officially launched their online stores).