Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (ALIBABZ), in talks to buy back a stake owned by Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), offered as much as HK$19.6 billion ($2.5 billion) to privatize a listed unit and gain full control of China’s biggest corporate e-commerce site.

The company bid HK$13.50 a share for the 27 percent of Alibaba.com Ltd. (1688) it doesn’t already own, according to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange statement yesterday. That’s 46 percent more than the last closing price.

Chairman Jack Ma seeks to buy out minority Alibaba.com shareholders four years after a $1.7 billion initial public offering as the unit warned of worsening earnings tied to a change in strategy. The buyout may facilitate Ma’s efforts to acquire Yahoo’s holdings in Alibaba Group, said Dundas Deng, an analyst at Guotai Junan Securities.

“By taking the unit private, it will make it more flexible for the parent to reorganize its assets, and this will be helpful to the discussions with Yahoo,” Deng, who rates Alibaba.com “accumulate,” said by phone from Shenzhen, China.