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Health & Fitness

What is Alibaba?

Imagine if there was a company that combined the best features of Amazon, Ebay, and Yahoo — would you be interested in finding out more about it, who ran it, and where it was? Have you heard of Alibaba?

No?

Have you heard of Yahoo? Great! Then you have heard of the firm that has a 24% stake in Alibaba and, therefore, has access to their financials. Thanks to this sizeable stake, there is a level of transparency and regulatory compliance that many other Chinese firms that would like to go public on U.S. markets could only dream of. The buzz around the firm’s still unannounced IPO is immense, and this is for two reasons. It would represent the largest tech IPO since Facebook first floated its shares last May, and because it would be a high-profile IPO of a Chinese company.

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While Chinese firms were quite popular targets for investors immediately following the financial crisis, as China continued to grow at near double-digit percentages, the interest in them has cooled dramatically in light of the financial irregularities that have plagued many of these issuers and cost many of them dearly. This would represent, perhaps, that the global market is prepared once again to give Chinese firms a look as potential investments.

One story that is of particular interest, and that I covered here, is the fact that Alibaba is not planning to go public in Hong Kong, which was traditionally the venue utilized by Chinese firms seeking international exposure — a very interesting story indeed!

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With the recent successful news surrounding Netflix, Facebook’s recent run-up in stock price, the looming Twitter IPO, and the much much larger Alibaba issuance in the near future, are we about to enter a new era of tech-dominated news?

Thoughts?

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