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The Alibaba IPO Roadshow Came to Singapore Yesterday

And some colleagues and I wrote it about it here:

Alibaba on Tuesday wrapped up its roadshow in Asia as it nears what could be the world’s largest initial public offering, with investors seeming to shrug off concerns about a higher valuation and focusing on the Chinese e-commerce firm’s growth prospects.

Founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma, along with other top executives at the Chinese e-commerce firm, met with about 150 investors behind closed doors at Singapore’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.

He did not speak with media, and hotel staff did not allow reporters to enter the luncheon event, which included prawns, spiced chicken, Portobello mushrooms and tiramisu, according to people who attended.

Ma, speaking in English, told investors that Alibaba is more worried about competitors it cannot see – early stage startups developing technologies “from their apartments” — than more established rivals, according to Adrian Toh, a Singapore-based executive at RHB OSK Asset Management, who attended the roughly hour-long meeting.

Many folks in the U.S. aren’t familiar with Alibaba. Check out this WSJ interactive feature about the company:

Alibaba is China’s — and by some measures, the world’s — biggest online commerce company. Its three main sites — Taobao, Tmall and Alibaba.com — have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company.

And here’s a snip from a story we ran back in April:

Jack Ma still has the spartan apartment in the Chinese city of Hangzhou where the former English teacher started Alibaba.com in 1999. As the e-commerce company grew, executives and employees often hunkered down there for inspiration while trying to come up with the next big thing.

Big doesn’t come close to describing Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. now.

Taobao, a website dreamed up in Mr. Ma’s apartment a decade ago, has about 800 million product listings from seven million sellers who pay Alibaba for advertising and other services. In 2013, the combined transaction volume of Taobao and another Alibaba-run shopping site called Tmall reached $240 billion, says a person with knowledge of the figure.

The total is more than double the size of Amazon.com Inc., triple the size of eBay Inc. and one-third larger than the value of all the transactions last year at the two U.S.-based e-commerce giants combined.

A fascinating company indeed.

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