Yahoo's forty percent stake in Taobao represented a huge crisis for the company's founding team. The best way to resolve this crisis was to buy back Yahoo's shares. While repurchasing all of them wasn't necessary, they needed to acquire at least half to start.
However, Yahoo's new CEO had significant reservations about Jack Ma, believing he had not managed Yahoo China effectively. But Yahoo China was merely a foster child in Jack Ma's eyes. Naturally, he wouldn't expend much effort on it when he barely had time to care for his own biological child, Taobao.
Given his strong reservations about Jack Ma, Yahoo's new CEO was certainly not going to relinquish the shares so easily. The only reason he hadn't made any moves yet was that he was waiting for the right opportunity.
