Alibaba picks New York Stock Exchange for IPO

Alibaba will trade under the symbol "BABA," the company said in an updated IPO prospectus.

"We participated in a comprehensive and deliberate exchange selection process and we are pleased to welcome Alibaba Group to the New York Stock Exchange where they will join our network of the world's best companies and leading brands," a spokesperson of NYSE said, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Alibaba filed the registration documents for an IPO last month that is expected to raise about $20 million and could surpass Facebook as the largest tech offering in history.

Alibaba has yet to announce the number of shares sold or the pricing of the offering. However, the major exiting shareholder will be Yahoo, which is committed to selling more than one third of its current 22.6% holding. Alibaba was said to sell some new shares.

Yahoo acquired a 40% stake in the Chinese company in 2005 for $1 billion. It exited approximately half of this holding in 2012 when Alibaba completed a share buyback worth $6.3 billion in cash, $800 million in preference shares, and $550 million in patent and licensing payments.

Softbank is the single largest shareholder with a 34.4% stake while Alibaba founder and executive chairman Jack Ma and executive vice chairman Joe Tsai own 8.9% and 3.6%, respectively.

The firm is backed by a string of private equity investors, with the likes of Silver Lake, DST Global, Yunfeng Capital and Temasek Holdings, China Investment Corp, Boyu Capital, CITIC Capital and CDB Capital.

The group posted an unaudited net income of RMB17.71 billion ($2.8 billion) for the nine months ended December 2013, up from RMB4.27 billion in the same period of the previous year. Revenues reached RMB40.47 billion for the first nine months, against RMB25.84 billion for comparable period of 2012.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Exits
• Technology
• Alibaba Group
• IPO
• TMT
• Exit
• China