Friday, Oct. 20 will go down as the day Chinese mega e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding made its grand entry into the U.S. market. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange Friday at 9:30 a.m. (Make that Friday at 9:30 p.m. for those in Asian markets.)
To celebrate the event, Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma was to ring the bull’s opening bell. The company’s shares will trade under the symbol BABA. The company hopes to raise as much as $125 billion in U.S. dollars. The analysts are saying that if share prices come in at the expected range of 66-68 U.S. dollars, they will make history as the biggest initial public offering (IPO) ever, eclipsing the record of Agricultural Bank of China, which raised $22.1 billion USD in 2010.
Alibaba.com Limited is an investment holding company that provides software, technology and related services, primarily on the online business-to-business marketplaces around the world. It was founded in 1999 and is based in Hangzhou, China. Its phenomenal growth has been the talk of financial circles. It is China’s biggest online e-commerce firm and handles more business than its rivals.
The last two weeks have seen a rigorous marketing campaign in major U.S. cities, which ended Thursday pending the Friday opening. The demand for shares has risen so fast recently that bankers had to stop taking orders in some places. Friday’s IPO will answer many of the questions that have arisen about the stock prices.
In its U.S. debut, it is offering 320 million shares, 123 million of them newly issued by the company and the remaining 197 million shares now currently owned by shareholders. Among top shareholders are Japan’s Softbank (34 percent) and Yahoo (22.4 percent.
Jack Ma owns 8.8 percent of the company’s shares and will be offering 12.7 million shares (0.5 percent) as the company starts trading in New York. Executive vice president Joseph Tsai will be offering 4.3 million shares, equivalent to a n 0.2 percent stake.