Jack Ma, chief of Alibaba wants to buy Yahoo

The founder of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant whose bitter rift with Yahoo! was one of the main reasons Carol Bartz was fired as chief executive, has said he wants to buy the beleaguered web search company.

Jack Ma, chief executive and chairman of Alibaba, in which Yahoo! has a stake of around 40pc, told a China 2.0 conference at Stanford University that he would be "very, very interested" in buying Yahoo! outright and that he has discussed options with other potential buyers.

"It's more complicated than we thought. There are so many people interested in that and we are also talking to them and they are talking to us," he said. "I cross my fingers, just to say we are very, very interested."

Asked which parts of Yahoo! he was most interested in, Mr Ma added that he wanted "the whole piece of Yahoo! China is already ours, right? It's already in my pocket."

Any deal between Yahoo! and Alibaba would draw a neat line under the tensions that soured the longstanding commercial partnership between the two companies.

Ms Bartz repeatedly thwarted attempts by Mr Ma to buy back some of Yahoo!'s stake in Alibaba, causing considerable tensions between the two companies.

However, the final straw was the circumstances surrounding the transfer of Alibaba's payment business, Alipay, to a closely held company controlled by Mr Ma at the start of the year.

Ms Bartz and Yahoo!'s board did not appear to realise how much the deal would impact the value of Yahoo!'s $1bn (£610m) investment in Alibaba until after the transaction was complete. Shareholders have since been lining up to sue Yahoo! for "misleading" them about the restructuring.

When Ms Bartz was fired last month, the difficult relationship with Alibaba and Yahoo!'s stagnating growth were cited as the two key factors.

Her ousting was spectacular. Ms Bartz informed staff in an email that she had been fired over the phone, and then claimed in a blistering interview with Fortune magazine that the Yahoo! board had scapegoated her and "f----- [her] over".

Yahoo! named Tim Morse as acting chief executive but has yet to replace Ms Bartz on a permanent basis. Analysts and investors expect a change of ownership before an appointment is made.

Jerry Yang, co-founder and former chief executive of Yahoo!, initially said the listed company was not up for sale.

However he subsequently confirmed in an email to staff that it has appointed Allen & Company, the investment bank, to field "inquiries from multiple parties that have already expressed an interest in a number of potential options" and to conduct a review of the business.

AOL is understood to have entered discussions about a potential merger, and Microsoft, which tried to buy the company in 2008 for $45bn or $31 a share, is expected to reprise its bid.

Yahoo! shares climbed 5pc to $13.80 (£8.85) in after-hours trading.