Alibaba put HK$50.4B into China's top hypermarket — sold it for HK$13.1B

In October 2017 Alibaba paid HK$22.4 billion for a 36.16% stake in Sun Art Retail, operator of RT-Mart, China's largest hypermarket chain — the flagship deal of its 'New Retail' doctrine of fusing online data with offline stores. In October 2020 it paid another HK$27.957 billion to lift its stake to 72% and take control. Total invested: HK$50.357 billion. The plan was digital transformation; the reality was a shrinking format — in FY2024 Sun Art's revenue fell 13.3% to ¥72.567 billion and it swung to a ¥1.668 billion net loss, closing 20 hypermarkets.

On the evening of January 1, 2025, Alibaba announced it would sell its entire 78.7% holding to DCP Capital for up to HK$13.138 billion (~¥11.8 billion) — roughly HK$37 billion below what it had put in. The exit had been signalled since the stock was suspended in September 2024; it closed on February 27, 2025. Chairman Joe Tsai had already called traditional retail non-core, and CEO Eddie Wu's framework demanded focus. Half a month earlier Alibaba had sold Intime at a ¥9.3 billion loss — together the two deals were the liquidation of New Retail.

What the retreat left: Sun Art CEO Shen Hui promised continued cooperation with Alibaba, but the empire of department stores and hypermarkets was gone except for Hema. The company that championed New Retail spent HK$50 billion to learn that an e-commerce giant cannot remake a hypermarket by buying one. The bill was settled in two announcements, one in December and one in January — the most expensive tuition in Chinese retail strategy.