Alibaba surges in New York Trading debut after U.S. IPO
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. surged in its U.S. trading debut, after the company raised a record-breaking $21.8 billion in an initial public offering.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. surged in its U.S. trading debut, after the company raised a record-breaking $21.8 billion in an initial public offering.
The Chinese company’s shares rose 38 percent to $93.89 in New York today, after the IPO was priced at $68. The e-commerce company, which started in 1999 with $60,000 cobbled together by founder Jack Ma, is now valued at $231.4 billion. That makes it larger than Amazon.com Inc. and EBay Inc. combined, and more valuable than all but 10 companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.
Ma, a former English teacher who started the company in his Hangzhou apartment, drew crowds of money managers to meetings held around the world as the company pitched itself to investors this month. Alibaba has profited from China’s burgeoning consumer class by dominating the e-commerce industry in the country of 1.36 billion people.