The Alibaba Group, a leading Chinese e-commerce company, announced Monday it will spend 7 billion U.S. dollars to repurchase up to one-half of its major shareholder Yahoo! Inc.'s stake in the company, or approximately 20 percent of Alibaba's fully diluted shares.

After the deal, Yahoo and Japan's Softbank Corp., another major Alibaba shareholder, would see their voting rights diluted below 50 percent in the company's new board, Alibaba said in a statement.