Chinese tech giant Alibaba makes $1.43bn investment in digital advertising firm Focus Media | City A.M.

Chinese tech group Alibaba has snapped up a minority stake in digital advertising firm Focus Media in a deal worth $1.43bn (£1.1bn).

In a statement, the company said it would buy a 6.62 per cent in the firm, and could increase its stake by five per cent in the next year.

Alibaba will also invest $511.1m in an entity owned by Focus Media chairman Jason Jiang by subscribing to newly issued shares.

Focus Media is China’s biggest operator of out-of-home advertising boards, mainly made up of digital signage screens.

The investment will go towards growing Focus Media as it looks to boost its reach to 500m consumers through 5m terminals in 500 cities in China.

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Earlier this month, Alibaba said it was in talks to provide cloud services to telco giant BT, in an effort to take on Amazon’s domination of the European market.

Alibaba backer Eight Roads recently announced a separate £14m investment in London-based micro-investment app MoneyBox.

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