Now I Know Why Alibaba Has Been Rising
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, through its subsidiaries, provides online and mobile commerce businesses in the People's Republic of China and internationally. Alibaba is the house (really the company) that Jack Ma built. A former English teacher, Jack Ma cofounded Alibaba and eventually made Jack the richest man in China, as well as one of the wealthiest people in the world.
Jack also created Singles Day. Singles Day is very similar to Amazon Prime day. Introduced in 2015 in part to celebrate Amazon's 20th anniversary, the first Amazon Prime Day was a one day only retail holiday that sought to overtake Black Friday as the sales event of the year. Singles Day is like Amazon Prime day, but much, much larger. Last year, Prime Day was a 48-hour event selling over 175 million items and raked in over $2 billion dollars. Last year Singles’ Day took in approximately $30 billion. Singles Day is also generating other non-shopping traditions in China. For example, blind date parties are becoming more common on Singles Day, thus morphing the holiday into something of a Valentine's Day, as well.
But Alibaba is so much more than Singles Day. Besides being the largest online wholesale market for, the company also owns, Taobao which is just like eBay. Then there is Tmall, that the company owns to which serves as a marketplace for major brands and retailers. While Amazon has AWS, Alibaba has Alibaba Cloud which is the largest cloud services provider in China, as well as one of the largest in the world. Oh and unlike Amazon, the company is also involved in digital payments and micro lending.
However, Jack Ma announced his retirement in 2019. Because Jack is a former English teacher, the date that Ma chose to retire was on September 10, Teachers' Day in China. After two decades building Alibaba into a $460 billion business, Jack is now focusing full time on philanthropy through his Jack Ma Foundation in 2014. But I know he couldn’t stay away for the business world too long.
Billionaire Jack Ma’s payment and financial technology company Ant Group has filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong and Shanghai, marking the first steps toward the behemoth’s blockbuster share sales. The IPO is expected to be the world’s largest offering, beating that of Saudi Aramco last year.
The company said in the filing on 25 August that the sale would be used to “further pursue [their] vision to digitalise the service industry” as well as bolster cross-border payments and boost its research and development capabilities, including recruiting and retaining talent. It did not specify a share price range or the amount to be raised in the highly-anticipated IPO.
The Alibaba (BABA) spinoff and fintech Ant Group is planning an IPO in Hong Kong and Shanghai is a spinoff of Alibaba. It happened in 2011 when Jack Ma controversially transferred Alipay out of the e-commerce company into an entity he controlled, to the anger of existing investors such as Yahoo. Alibaba now owns 33% of Ant.
Because Ant will be listed on non-US exchanges there is no way to participate directly. Ant says it will use the Shanghai money for business development including acquisitions, while it will use the Hong Kong money for its globalization plans and expansion outside China. Because it’s difficult to access the Shanghai market due to limits on foreign participation. One can participate indirectly by buying Alibaba at one of the daily demand levels. Personally I like the lower demand level the best.
This post is my personal opinion. I’m not a financial advisor, this isn't financial advise. Do your own research before making investment decisions.
Posted Using LeoFinance
