Ma to Bartz: Time to Split…The Company, I Mean

Kara Swisher: Could you buy Yahoo someday?
Jack Ma: I would love to, if someone would lend me the money.

Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma says he doesn’t have the money to buy Yahoo, but he does have some advice for its CEO Carol Bartz and a potential solution to the company’s problems.

Split it up.

“If running a big company isn’t easy, divide it up into a few small companies,” he said of Yahoo at the D9 conference Wednesday evening. “They should be more open-minded about ways to solve their problems.”

Blunt advice for Bartz, with whom Ma has a strained relationship to say the least. Still, he did soften it with a sympathetic note. “I have a lot of respect for people trying to turn around a company, like Carol,” he said. “It’s not an easy job.”