20 Nov Alibaba a hit

Posted at 12:59h in Safire Highlights by

Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba was started in 1999 when Jack Ma founded the website Alibaba.com, a business-to-business portal to connect Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers. In 2012, two of Alibaba’s portals handled 1.1 trillion yuan ($170 billion) in sales. Alibaba is China’s largest online commerce company: in September 2014, its market value was measured as US$231 billion. Alibaba.com went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2007 and was delisted again in 2012 because of issues with the company’s structure and Hong Kong Stock Exchange requirements. On 6 May 2014, the Alibaba Group filed registration documents to go public in the U.S. in what may be one of the largest initial public offerings in American history. Alibaba’s consumer-to-consumer portal Taobao, which is similar to eBay.com, features nearly a billion products and is one of the 20 most-visited websites globally. The Group’s websites accounted for over 60% of parcels delivered in China by March 2013, and 80% of the nation’s online sales by September 2014.