Alibaba Group Holding Limited, a Chinese multinational holding conglomerate that specialises in e-commerce, retail, Internet, AI, and technology, is planning to list its shares on Hong Kong’s stock market. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) is expected to raise up to $15 billion. This listing is said to be the city’s biggest listing in nine years.
While the IPO date hasn’t been made public, the company had planned to list before now but called it off due to the city’s long-running pro-democracy demonstrations and the China-US trade war.
Alibaba is already currently listed on the New York’s Nasdaq and so a second listing would act as a trailblazer for other big tech firms to list closer to home instead of concentrating solely on only major exchanges around the world.
What you should know: If Alibaba realises up to the planned $15 billion IPO, it will be the biggest IPO since insurance company, AIA Group Limited which raised $20.5 billion in 2010. However, Alibaba had initially planned to raise $20 billion before it changed plans.
Why this matters: A Hong Kong listing would help Alibaba further its ambitions to offer a broad array of digital services in China and around the world. The listing could also boost the company’s image with Beijing, which wants to develop and improve Chinese markets.
[READ MORE: The world’s most profitable company keeps delaying its IPO]
Meanwhile, the United States/China war on technology supremacy seems to be heating up as a Sci-Tech Innovation Board has been launched in Shanghai, China. In recent times, the Chinese President, Xi Jinping has urged China tech leaders to do more in order to become global champions and as a counteraction, the United States is trying harder to stop the operations of Chinese telecom giant, Huawei.
About Alibaba Group: Founded in 1999, the company provides a consumer-to-consumer, business-to-consumer and business-to-business sales services via web portals, as well as electronic payment services, shopping search engines, and cloud computing services.
In addition, Alibaba owns and operates a diverse array of businesses around the world in numerous sectors and is named as one of the world’s most admired companies by Fortune magazine.
