FILE - In this Monday, Sept. 15, 2014, file photo, Alibaba Group founder and Executive Chairman Jack&&
&The day for that debate has finally come,& Charles Li, CEO of stock exchange operator Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd., said on his blog after the bourse unveiled a &concept paper& at the end of August to gather views from the public on &weighted voting rights.&Hong Kong's stock exchange earns some of its profit from listing charges, which include an initial fee of up to $84,000 and annual fees of up to $153,000. Listing-related revenue rose 13 percent in the first half of the year as more companies went public compared with last year.The paper follows discussions among the exchange, finance industry executives and the city's securities regulator that began nearly 15 months before, said Li.&Let's all be frank, it would have been nice if this could have been released earlier,& he wrote.Some argue that new rules are needed to avoid losing other blockbuster IPOs in the future. Others say the current framework is necessary to prevent some investors from having a disproportionate say in running companies.David Graham, Hong Kong Exchange's chief regulatory officer and head of listing, stressed that the decision to explore changes was not triggered by the loss of Alibaba's IPO and that the debate started before the failed IPO talks.&I can confirm this is not in response to an individual company,& he told reporters. &We were already a long way down this process.& He said the exchange has not taken any position for or against changes.Feedback on the paper is due by Nov. 30, and the exchange may then launch a public consultation depending on the responses received.Investment & Company InformationFinanceHong KongAlibabastock market
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Alibaba founder Jack Ma at the NYSE today.
Photo: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant, made its market debut this morning in a $22 billion public offering. The initial offering price valued the company at $168 billion, making it bigger than its closest American analogue, Amazon, and one of the biggest IPOs of all&time.
If you’re just catching up on Alibaba: It’s a giant Chinese conglomerate, started by a former English teacher named Jack Ma, that has become the largest seller of online goods in China, as well as the largest payment processor and cloud storage business. (Think Amazon plus eBay plus PayPal plus Dropbox, plus a bunch of other rolled-up services, and you’ll come close.) You can use Alibaba’s marketplace to buy , a , and many other delightful oddities, in addition to normal household&goods.
Ma will become one of the world’s richest men after today’s stock sale, with a stake worth more than $13 billion. The offering is also expected to create hundreds if not thousands of
in Hangzhou, the company’s&hometown.
The news that Alibaba was considering going public sent Wall Street into a tizzy earlier this year, with banks
tooth and nail for part of the underwriting action. But the Americans who are happiest about Alibaba’s stock market debut are probably executives at Yahoo. A decade ago, in one of the luckiest moves in recent Silicon Valley history, Yahoo
$1 billion into Alibaba. (Its stake is now worth as much as $35&billion.)
Alibaba is a fascinating company for many reasons, but one thing that sets it apart from American rivals is the diversity of its executive ranks. There are 9 women on the company’s 27-member management committee, including its chief financial officer. “That&s triple the ratio of women in board seats and senior executive roles at the largest companies in California,” &writes.
Part of what’s made Alibaba a success is its role as the e-commerce engine for China’s emerging middle class. Times columnist Farhad Manjoo
earlier this year that “the crux of Alibaba&s pitch to investors is that Chinese customers will begin to act much more like American customers.” Today, consumer spending accounts for only a third of China’s GDP, as opposed to two thirds of America’s. If that changes, it could send many more customers Alibaba’s&way.
Jack Ma, who isn’t well known outside finance and tech circles in America, is a wonderfully quirky chief executive. According to , Ma “used a dizzying array of visual symbols to describe his management philosophy, including fish in a pond and gold bars falling from the sky” in an interview with an American business school professor. Today, at the New York Stock Exchange, Ma apparently
that his hero was Forrest Gump and referred to himself in the third person. (“15 years ago I told people that if Jack Ma can be successful, 80% of people in China can be successful.“) He’s getting the hang of this eccentric billionaire thing&already.
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O pen sesame,&#8221; a person on a San Francisco street said to Jack Ma. &#8220;Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,&#8221; a waitress in the city&#8217;s coffee shop told him.
Rather than a study of Persian literature, the Chinese school teacher-turned businessman was testing out what he would name his new company. His previous company, China Pages, had flopped. Of the nearly three dozen people he asked that day about the poor woodcutter Ali Baba who stumbled upon hidden treasures from the Arabic-language tales One Thousand and One Nights, he said everyone knew what it meant.
&#8220;Ali Baba is a kind, smart business person, and he helped the village,&#8221; Ma .
&#8220;So … easy to spell, and globally known. Alibaba opens sesame for small- to medium-sized companies.&#8221;
Started in 1999, Alibaba would grow from a Hangzhou, China-based company that helped small, local businesses sell their products online to a behemoth in the world of e-commerce. It&#8217;s a web of related companies and Internet properties that would come by 2013 to facilitate the sale of $248 billion worth of merchandise &#8212; double what Amazon did in the same year, according to Bloomberg.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. made its American public debut Sept. 19 on the New York Stock Exchange, in what is expected be the largest IPO in history. The conglomerate includes business to business shops, business to consumers shops, wholesalers, music sharing, and an online-payment system, and is valued at .
&#8216;Crocodile in the Yangtze&#8217; documentary looks at Alibaba&#8217;s rise
< is a large business-to-business retail shop, connecting buyers and suppliers. The range can be dizzying &#8212; Gala apples, electronic cigarettes, water bowls for baby chickens, solar water heaters, hair removal epilators.
mostly deals in bulk &#8212; meaning you can get a two ounce essential oil bottle for only $0.098, but your minimum order would have to be 10,000 bottles.
But the Alibaba Group is made up of many entities, . Here&#8217;s a way to get a sense of what some of them do, via comparisons to western companies they&#8217;re kind of like in what they deal in:
Click on a name for their dossier.
Alibaba has been on an investor &#8216;spending spree&#8217; for Silicon Valley companies. Experts say its U.S. investments are vital to its strategy to become the world&#8217;s top e-tailer.
How to Alibaba
CCTV America’s Owen Fairclough gets a &#8216;walk-through&#8217; of Alibaba, how it&#8217;s different than Amazon, and how Americans can use it.
Danielle Bailey, research director at L-Two, a business research firm with a focus on branding, explains Alibaba&#8217;s expansion plans in Europe and U.S.
Alibaba is likely to break all IPO records. Friday&#8217;s closing price gave the company a value of $231.44 billion, compared with $150 billion for Amazon and $67 billion for eBay.
For context,
notes Amazon has a market capitalization of around $150 billion.
Alibaba offered 320.1 million shares for a total offering size of $21.77 billion. Underwriters have a 30-day option to buy up to 48 million more shares. Jack Ma has said he will sell , roughly 6 percent of what he owns. After the sale, Ma will still retain more than 8 percent ownership.
Alibaba co-founder Joseph Tsai said he will sell 4.25 million of the 83.5 million shares he owns, and Yahoo, which owns just over a fifth of the company, will sell 121 million shares.
A group of 27 managers dubbed the &#8220;Alibaba Partnership&#8221; will have the power to nominate a majority of board members, a structure that was unpalatable to Hong Kong&#8217;s stock market and resulted in Alibaba deciding to list in New York.
Alibaba says the arrangement will preserve its innovative culture in a fast-developing industry and reduce distractions from financial market fluctuations. The plan echoes tech founders in China and abroad who say they need to retain control to keep alive the creative energy of their startup days and launch new initiatives, even if that lowers short-term profits.
As the countdown to the Alibaba IPO commences, CCTV America was joined by Dan Stefan, Senior IPO analyst with Privco. He shared some of investment advises to would-be investors.
No more than two months after Alibaba bought a film company, it asked for the stock to be suspended.
2014 has been a record year for companies choosing to go public. The United States is getting ready for one of its biggest listings, Alibaba.
Alibaba is slated to go public in the U.S. on Friday. Demand has been so high that it has boosted its price range to $66 to $68 a share, up from $60 to $66. There hasn&#8217;t been so much hype for an IPO since Facebook&#8217;s in 2012.
The U.S. leg of Alibaba&#8217;s roadshow is in full swing. The e-commerce giant&#8217;s top executives and underwriters are here in New York meeting with investors.
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba says it expects to price its initial public offering at between $60 and $66 per a share. According to its regulatory filing, Alibaba&#8217;s listing would be the biggest U.S. IPO ever.
More and more foreign companies that want to go public are going to New York. Alibaba is preparing to list on The New York Stock Exchange in what could become the biggest tech sector IPO in U.S. history.
Could the Alibaba IPO be one of the biggest ever? Alibaba is expected to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange around September 19th. Bloomberg has valued Alibaba at a little less than $200 billion. For an in depth look at the stock market launch, Matt Turplip, senior analyst at financial researchers PrivCo, sat down with CCTV America&#8217;s Michelle Makori.
Alibaba announces changes to IPO We spoke to Michael Moe, CEO and the CIO at GSV Asset Management in San Diego.
Alibaba&#8217;s Asian leg of US IPO roadshow begins in Hong Kong Alibaba started its Asia roadshow from Hong Kong Monday, for its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange. The company’s founder, Jack Ma, highlighted Alibaba’s plans of becoming a global company by expanding into the U.S. and European markets after its listing.
&#8230;we have insisted that normal people can do extraordinary things. Jack Ma – May, 2014 Letter to employees prior to SEC filing
Now that Alibaba is trading on the New York Stock Exchange, can regular investors get a bite of the action? Adviser Investments CEO Daniel P. Wiener answered some common questions about investing in the e-commerce conglomerate.
Can a non-U.S. investor buy Alibaba stock?
What&#8217;s the difference between buying a share of Alibaba vs. buying a share of Amazon?
Will I actually have ownership in Alibaba if I buy stock?
Would you, the expert, buy Alibaba stock the day it goes public?
Can I get Alibaba stock at its IPO price on the first day?
Can Alibaba become a trillion dollar company?
Alibaba Group&#8217;s initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange was the largest in history.
Roll over each bar to see how much the top ten companies raised on their market debut day.
Data: Associated Press, Wall Street Journal
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba files for US IPO
More and more foreign companies that want to go public are going to New York. Alibaba is preparing to list on The New York Stock Exchange in what could become the biggest tech sector IPO in U.S. history.
Investors say Alibaba IPO filing leaves many questions unanswered
The much-anticipated IPO by Alibaba could become the biggest in U.S. history, but its debut comes at a time when internet and tech stocks are stumbling.
NYSE and Nasdaq battle for Alibaba
The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq are battling it out for one the biggest Initial Public Offerings ever as Alibaba is preparing to go public with a valuation of around $150 billion.
Our proposition is simple: we want to help small businesses grow by solving their problems through Internet technology. We fight for the little guy.
Jack Ma – SEC filing letter
ack Ma is the richest person in China and No. 35 in the world. Executive chairman of Alibaba Group and one of the company&#8217;s co-founders, Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. From when he was 12 through 20 years old, he would ride his bike for 40 minutes to Hangzhou&#8217;s West Lake district to practice English as a tour guide for tourists.
Ma graduated with a degree in English from Hangzhou Teacher&#8217;s Institute in 1988. He became a teacher making 100 to 120 renminbi, about $12 to $15 a month, after being rejected for a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken. His first venture into business, China Pages, was a flop.
Alibaba was born in 1999 in Ma&#8217;s Hangzhou, China apartment. His ownership in the company was worth roughly $18.2 billion, after Alibaba&#8217;s closing share price on its first day trading on the NYSE. That doesn&#8217;t include the shares he sold in the IPO, which are worth another $867 million, and his other investments.
He&#8217;s known for a strong affinity to martial arts novels, and, according to Bloomberg, asks employees to chose their work name and identity as a character from popular fantasy books. The one he chose? Fictional kung fu guru Feng Quingyang.
But Ma said his biggest hero wasn&#8217;t one of the Chinese warriors, rather, it&#8217;s Forrest Gump.
&#8220;I really like that guy,&#8221; Ma said during an interview with business channel CNBC. &#8220;Every time I&#8217;m frustrated, I watch the movie. (The movie tells) me that no matter whatever changed, you are you.&#8221;
Who is Jack Ma?
Alibaba&#8217;s bonus scheme strengthens founder Jack Ma’s control
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Alibaba founder Jack Ma: China&#8217;s &#8216;Godfather&#8217; of internet entrepreneurialism
eBay is a shark in the ocean. We are a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we will lose. But if we fight in the river, we will win. Jack MaChina regulators slam Alibaba in report withheld until after IPO - SFGate
Associated Press
Photo: Andy Wong / Associated Press
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Regulators accuse Alibaba of allowing the sale of counterfeit goods through its Taobao sit.
Regulators accuse Alibaba of allowing the sale of counterfeit goods through its Taobao sit.
Photo: Andy Wong / Associated Press
China regulators slam Alibaba in report withheld until after IPO
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BEIJING & Chinese regulators accused e-commerce giant
of permitting sales of fake goods and hurting consumers in a report that was withheld until now to avoid disrupting the company&s U.S. stock market debut.
Alibaba, one of China&s biggest private companies, accused the regulator of bias and misconduct Wednesday in a rare break with the obedient public tone of Chinese businesses in dealings with authorities.
The sternly worded report by the
said Alibaba allowed unlicensed merchants to use its Taobao and Tmall platforms and failed to protect consumers& rights.
The report was the result of a meeting in July between regulators and Alibaba Group Ltd. management but the regulator said its release was postponed to avoid affecting progress toward the company&s New York stock market listing. Alibaba went public in September after raising a record $25 billion in an initial public offering.
Alibaba accused the agency official in charge of Internet monitoring, Liu Hongliang, of unspecified &procedural misconduct.& It said the company will file a formal complaint with the agency.
Such public defiance is almost unheard of in a Chinese system in which companies nearly always respond to official criticism by promising to reform.
&We welcome fair and just supervision, and oppose selective omissions and malicious actions,& said the statement. &Obtaining a biased conclusion using the wrong methodology has inflicted irreparable and serious damage to Taobao and Chinese online businesses.&
Alibaba did not immediately respond to a request for details of what it believed to be misconduct.
The U.S. government and others have accused Alibaba of allowing sales of counterfeit goods but Wednesday&s report was the first time the Chinese government has criticized a company that is a leading star in an Internet industry communist leaders are eager to develop.
&Illegal business exists on Alibaba Group&s trading platforms, and for a long time the company has failed to pay adequate attention and failed to take measures to stop it,& the government report said. &This not only is the biggest crisis of integrity faced by the company since its founding, but also has hurt other Internet companies that try to operate legally.&
It said Alibaba allowed &illegal advertising& that misled consumers with false claims about low prices and other details. It said some Alibaba employees took bribes and the company failed to deal effectively with fraud.
The report said regulators and Alibaba would work together to improve management but gave no details of planned changes.
Alibaba, founded in 1999 by , a former English teacher, was one of China&s earliest Internet companies. Its IPO made Ma China&s richest entrepreneur, with a net worth of $25 billion.
Alibaba earned $485 million in the three months ended in September, which was its first quarter as a publicly traded company, and generated revenue of $2.7 billion. It said the total amount of goods sold rose 49 percent and the number of active buyers rose 52 percent to 307 million.
In 2011, the
added Taobao to a blacklist of &notorious markets& linked to sales of pirated and fake goods. The company was removed the following year.
In December, the company said it had removed 90 million listings for goods that might have violated intellectual property rights. The company said it spent $161 million from the start of 2013 through late 2014 on blocking counterfeit goods and improving consumer protection.
In January, Alibaba and the
announced an initiative under which the Chinese company will prevent vendors from exporting to the United States goods that are the target of recall orders.}