Alibaba is pitching itself as a way to invest in the rapid growth of ecommerce in China and beyond, as the Chinese internet giant filed documents for what could be one of the largest US initial public offerings on record.
According to the filing, Alibaba’s own estimate of its valuation was between $96.9bn and $121bn as recently as last month, double what it believed it was worth at the start of the year.
The company, founded in 1999 by former English teacher Jack Ma, controls an estimated 80 per cent of China’s ecommerce market through its Tmall and Taobao sites, with almost $250bn worth of goods sold over its Chinese marketplaces last year.