Question

2. Why do you think the management of Alibaba decided against doing the IPO in China's main stock market, Shanghai? Why did they ultimately decide against Hong Kong?

Answer 1

It would be one of the largest Internet IPOs ever, and could possibly go beyond last year's public offering by Facebook. Some observers expect the value of Alibaba to top $100 billion once the Chinese e-commerce company's shares begin trading. Most people had been expecting Alibaba to be listed in Hong Kong before yesterday. After all, Alibaba founder Jack Ma listed the Alibaba.com business-to-business website on the stock exchange in Hong Kong back in 2007

Ma is also close friends with the Hong Kong Exchange's CEO. It is suspected that the two men have been in the last few months in deep discussions. It has also been speculated that the Chinese government has tried to force Ma to list in Hong Kong itself. Beijing believes that Alibaba has the potential to be one of the world's most successful Internet companies for years to come. That would bring China prestige. Getting Hong Kong's Alibaba list would also show that the world's largest companies can remain listed in Hong Kong and continue to grow.

Its all about control. Ma owns 7% of Alibaba. For a founder of a big successful Internet company, that's surprisingly low. For example, Jeff Bezos still owns a little less than 20% of Amazon (AMZN), which he created in 1994. Mark Zuckerberg has 30% of Facebook ownership. Ma must be troubled by this, but you can't blame him for doing what he had to do when Alibaba was formed in 1999 and increasing the business by taking powerful foreign partners out of money.