Video: Alibaba's long road to Wall Street
China's e-commerce giant Alibaba made its debut successfully on the New York Stock Exchange Friday, becoming the world's second-largest Internet company after Google. The complicated structure of Alibaba and the hype by mainstream media outlets in the US about its operation risks have failed to hold back global investors from chasing after its stocks. Its shares surged 38 percent on the first day of trading.
The growth of Alibaba is an unusual experience integrating China's opportunity and national conditions with Western capital and the world's confidence in the Chinese market. It has wielded a super influence upon the Chinese market and won the utmost confidence from the market. The impressive IPO, the biggest ever in US stock market history, can be viewed as a union connecting Chinese society and the rest of the world.
The West also thinks highly of what China regards as quite promising. This is what the New York Stock Exchange told us on Friday.
The complexity of China can hardly be thoroughly understood by ordinary Western investors. Alibaba was preparing its IPO amid economic transformation in China. When the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange rang, people bet not only on bright prospects for the company, but also on the stability of China's gradual market-oriented reform. The IPO demonstrates that the predictions of the West toward China are not as pessimistic as some media have reported.
There are two reasons why Chinese people have confidence in Alibaba. On the one hand, Alibaba is deeply rooted and also rises from the market; and on the other, the public has recognized that e-commerce represents the future. They are in increasing favor of marketized private enterprises and the high degree of market economization is affecting social confidence and resource allocation.
Now it seems that the rest of the world sometimes follows in the footsteps of the Chinese. China's huge potential, developed with its own Chinese characteristics, is now making its mark, which may lead Westerners to redefine their attitudes in accordance with the wishes of Chinese people. Both Chinese and Westerners need to adapt to and accept the reality Alibaba displays and comprehend its predictions about the future.
Why Alibaba decided to list in the US, though a shallow and improper question, involves a healthy and active aspiration that is not contradictory with the general global trend. Alibaba represents an era of the development of China's private Internet firms.
More support is needed for a new era. Chinese investors should not only play a major role in such feasts as Alibaba's IPO but also possess the ability to share the prospects. Will Alibaba surpass Google and become the largest Internet company in the world one day? Perhaps. China now boasts more than 600 million Net users and Alibaba displays a more genial access for new users throughout the world.- Global Times
Alibaba IPO initiates new era in which China changes Internet
Chinese Internet-based e-commerce giant Alibaba launched its initial public offerings (IPO) in New York Stock Exchange on Friday. After pricing its stock at $68, Alibaba surged high on the opening day with its price soaring to $92.70, which gave the company a valuation of about $228.5 billion.In terms of market value, Alibaba has become the fourth biggest high-tech company after Apple, Google and Microsoft, and the second biggest Internet-based company in the world.
This IPO, now the biggest ever, has become a landmark in the global history of Internet development. Showing up on the international stage as a world class corporation, Alibaba reveals new business models and ideas of Chinese style.
Alibaba's IPO signals the start of a Chinese era in the global Internet. From 2005 to 2014, the population of Net users has increased dramatically and reached 3 billion worldwide.
Chinese Internet-based companies, starting from scratch, have grown to be leaders in the Internet community, engaging in a close competition with the US.
It is the trend of the age that keeps changing the world landscape, and customers are the basic forces to transform the situations of competition. The US remains dominant in most aspects. But after this experience, China will get the baton and take the lead.
So far, the average rate of Internet use in developed countries has surpassed 80 percent. They used their language advantages, high level of development and values to preside over the process in which the world Internet population has hit 3 billion.
However, in the next process to incorporate the other 3 billion people into the Internet community, developing countries will become the focus. China's new Net users in the countryside can serve as the best example.
In this process, these Silicon Valley-based CEOs and product managers will find it difficult to master their user experience and habits.
Instead, China's local enterprises such as Tencent and Alibaba will have more opportunities to acquire leadership in the new round of competition. It is only a matter of time for the development of the Chinese Internet to surpass that of its US counterpart.
Alibaba's IPO has unveiled the competition between China and the US in cyberspace. Although the US still gains an upper hand in the contest, China is catching up with it. And as long as China employs appropriate strategies, it will go beyond the US in many terms. In the future, China and the US will coexist in a mutually competitive and cooperative scenario.
Alibaba's success in IPO signals that Chinese Internet-based enterprises are getting more involved in globalization. The Internet has changed China, and it is time for China to change the Internet.
By Fang Xingdong Source:Global Times Published: 2014-9-22
The author is director of the Center for Internet and Society, Zhejiang University of Media and Communications. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
Alibaba Claims Title For Largest Global IPO Ever With Extra Share Sales
After claiming the record for the largest US-listed initial public
offering, Alibaba Group can now say its record-breaking IPO was the
biggest in the world.
On Monday, the company announced that underwriters had exercised an
option to purchase additional shares at the $68 IPO price, boosting the
total amount raised by Chinese e-commerce giant and its selling
shareholders from $21.8 billion to $25 billion. Bankers bought an
additional 48 million American depositary shares, taking the total
amount of shares sold in the offering to 368 million, or about 14.9% of
the company.
In raising $25 billion, Alibaba’s IPO surpassed the 2010 offering from the Agricultural Bank of China,
which raised $22.1 billion in it debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Alibaba was able to sell more shares due to its over-allotment, or
“greenshoe,” option, which allows underwriters to placate investor
demand for the stock by obtaining more shares from the company at the
IPO price.
Existing shareholders Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma, Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai and Yahoo YHOO -5.57%
provided the extra shares sold in the over-allotment. Ma sold an
additional 2.7 million shares, selling a total of about 15.5 million
shares in the IPO, while Tsai sold 5.2 million shares, after offloading
an additional 900,000 shares in the greenshoe.
By selling in the over-allotment, Yahoo became the largest seller in
Alibaba’s IPO, surpassing the 123 million shares offered directly from
the Hangzhou-based company. Yahoo sold an additional 18.26 million
shares, offloading a total of 140.3 million shares in the IPO for more
than $9.5 billion in pre-tax cash.
Alibaba began trading on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange, with
shares opening up at more than 35% above the $68 IPO price. On Monday,
shares have fallen below the $90 mark, down more than 4% in intraday
trading.
Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank , Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan , Morgan Stanley and Citigroup acted as joint book runners for the offering.
http://onforb.es/1C5MgFY
Alibaba's IPO Pop Makes Jack Ma The Richest Man In China
By Liyan Chen, Ryan Mac and Brian Solomon
The largest IPO in US history has put a new person on top of China’s richest.
As Alibaba shares surged over 35% to open at $92.70, founder and chairman Jack Ma’s stake in the company he founded boosted his net worth over $16 billion. That Alibaba stake pushes Ma above his rivals to the #1 spot as the wealthiest man in China. Ma’s total net worth grows higher when you calculate the $800 million in cash he pocketed by selling shares, which should rise to more than $1 billion once underwriters exercise their extra options. Ma also has separate stakes in private companies like Alibaba sister-company Alipay.
Ma’s rise to the top puts him ahead of former #1, Robin Li, another Chinese tech icon who founded search engine Baidu . Li sits at a net worth of $16.6 billion. Ma also leapfrogged the $15.5 billion man Pony Ma, whose Tencent is directly in competition with Alibaba over China’s growing mobile phone user base.
Ma’s net worth gain also places him into the top 10 richest people in tech worldwide, a group that includes Silicon Valley pioneers Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Read more about Alibaba’s first day of trading on Forbes’ live blog.
The Biggest U.S. IPOs In History
The Biggest IPOs In U.S. History
Alibaba broke records as the largest IPO in history after pricing its offering at $68 per share on Sept. 18, 2014. After an overallotment option the total proceeds rose to $25 billion, easily surpassing the likes of Visa and Facebook.Related post:
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