Alibaba and SoftBank Meet With Blackstone, as Promised Yahoo Investment Effort Proceeds

Alibaba CEO Jack Ma publicly promised in an onstage interview two weeks ago at our AsiaD conference in Hong Kong that his Chinese Internet company would start to meet with U.S. private equity firms to come up with possible ways to purchase Yahoo.

Now, as advertised loudly: Among the first stops, said several sources, was a meeting this week with Blackstone, a prominent New York investment firm that has been one of several large ones that have not signed a restrictive non-disclosure agreement with Yahoo.