One theory is that Alibaba would buy that holding company. That would be an effective stock buyback since shares in a holding company are usually discounted (th

One theory is that Alibaba would buy that holding company. That would be an effective stock buyback since shares in a holding company are usually discounted (they are strictly inferior to actual shares since they lack things like voting rights). So Alibaba can decrease total share count by X share and only pay Xshare_price95%.