Alibaba Group Holding Limited. This is the initial public offering of Alibaba Group Holding Limited, or Alibaba Group. We are offering American Depositary Shares, or ADSs, and the selling shareholders named in this prospectus are offering ADSs. Each ADS represents ordinary shares, par value US$0.000025 per share. IPO OF ALIBABA Alibaba raised $21. Unlike the US E-commerce giant Amazon.8 billion in its debut.8 billion. Making it the biggest U. If Alibaba's investment banks were to exercise their option to sell an additional 48 million shares.
SAN FRANCISCO/BEIJING (Reuters) - Part-way through Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's long-awaited IPO prospectus was a subtle, but striking, warning: investors should know that lead founder and executive chairman Jack Ma might work against the company's best interests.
The acknowledgment, on page 42 of a 300-plus-page filing, highlighted longstanding questions about the Chinese e-commerce giant's complex corporate structure and potential conflicts of interests surrounding Ma, who started Alibaba in his one-room apartment in 1999 and has since branched out into markets as diverse as e-payments and financial investment.
To be sure, such warnings of potential conflicts were included in the prospectuses of many founder-controlled tech companies, including Facebook Inc and LinkedIn Corp. But Alibaba's warning stands out given Ma's numerous investments in third-party firms that partner with his company.
One hot-button issue is Ma's control of Alipay, the PayPal-like affiliate established by Alibaba in 2004, which continues to provide the lions' share of payment services for the company's retail marketplaces.
Four years ago, Alibaba spun out Alipay to a group including Ma, who holds a 46 percent stake in Alipay through another company, Zhejiang Alibaba E-Commerce Co.
A row ensued: Alibaba investors including Yahoo Inc and SoftBank Corp objected to the spinoff, which Ma argued was needed to comply with Chinese central bank regulations governing foreign ownership of financial firms.
In 2010, China's central bank issued regulations governing online payment companies. 'These regulations stipulated that the scope of business, the qualifications of any foreign investor and any foreign ownership percentage would be subject to future additional regulations,' Alibaba said in its IPO filing.
Alibaba, Yahoo and SoftBank settled the matter in 2011, but not before David Einhorn, the Greenlight Capital hedge fund manager, sold all of his Yahoo shares in frustration at what he deemed mutual 'finger-pointing' between the companies.
Alibaba reiterated on Tuesday its longstanding position that the 2010 spinoff was intended to conform with the central bank regulations. But it also admitted that new rules on foreign-owned payments institutions hadn't appeared. 'At the time when the licenses were first issued, no such additional regulations governing foreign-owned payment companies had been put in place.'
The company declined to comment beyond the prospectus on the matter of Ma's potential conflict or his investments. It also declined to comment on media reports that it is in talks to buy back a stake in the payments firm, or whether Ma would recuse himself from any Alipay talks.
Alibaba ProspectusUNWANTED ATTENTION
Beyond Alipay, analysts and attorneys say they are concerned about Ma and Alibaba's related-party transactions and 'variable interest entities' -- firms associated with Alibaba in which Ma has a holding.
In the prospectus, Alibaba says structures such as 'variable interest entities' are to its benefit. The investments give Alibaba flexibility in the face of Chinese regulation. Ma can assume legal ownership of a company and agree to transfer 'all economic benefits' to Alibaba when legally permitted, the prospectus said. Livros romances gratis pdf.
According to Tuesday's prospectus, Ma has a 40 percent stake in 'several entities' with ties to Yunfeng Capital, an investment firm that has operated alongside Alibaba.
'You've got this complex web of variable interest entities, limited shareholder voting rights,' said Jim Angel, associate professor of finance at Georgetown University. 'There's definitely a lot of questions over this offering, but there's no doubt that Alibaba is a major e-commerce play.'
The deals can be complex. In April, Alibaba agreed to loan 6.5 billion yuan (about $1 billion) to co-founder Simon Xie. Through another company formed with Ma, Xie would then purchase a minority stake in Wasu Media Holding Co, an internet TV firm. Alibaba at the time announced it had reached a cooperation deal with Wasu Digital TV Media Group, the listed company's parent. It did not mention the loans or investment.
Alibaba also holds a stake in a separate TV and film company, and M&A lawyers have said the purchase could have been designed to circumvent anti-competition rules.
'This arrangement certainly raises serious questions about corporate governance,' a Beijing-based attorney at a multinational law firm said when the investment was made. The person declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
'Alibaba's tendency to do these kinds of deals makes the company appear to be cavalier about these kinds of conflicts. Here you have a guy in senior management taking 6 billion yuan out of his company to make an investment in another firm that he controls.'
Ma's investments do not ring alarm bells for everyone.
'This is one of those risk factors they have to tell you about, but you don't have to worry about it as long as Jack Maretains a meaningful stake in Alibaba,' said Lise Buyer, an IPO adviser who guided Google Inc's 2004 offering.
'This seems to me that something investors should be aware of, but not something they should be particularly nervous about at this stage in the company's life,' Buyer said. 'Call me in a year.'
But Buyer raised another issue -- the fact that Alibaba had just four board members. It intends to expand that to nine, but investors should wait to see who gets appointed before its listing, she said.
'It would be nice to see that before putting your money down,' she said.
(Additional reporting by Sarah McBride and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco, Editing by Edwin Chan and Peter Henderson)
'This arrangement certainly raises serious questions about corporate governance,' a Beijing-based attorney at a multinational law firm said when the investment was made. The person declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
'Alibaba's tendency to do these kinds of deals makes the company appear to be cavalier about these kinds of conflicts. Here you have a guy in senior management taking 6 billion yuan out of his company to make an investment in another firm that he controls.'
Ma's investments do not ring alarm bells for everyone.
'This is one of those risk factors they have to tell you about, but you don't have to worry about it as long as Jack Ma retains a meaningful stake in Alibaba,' said Lise Buyer, an IPO adviser who guided Google Inc's 2004 offering.
'This seems to me that something investors should be aware of, but not something they should be particularly nervous about at this stage in the company's life,' Buyer said. 'Call me in a year.'
But Buyer raised another issue -- the fact that Alibaba had just four board members. It intends to expand that to nine, but investors should wait to see who gets appointed before its listing, she said.
'It would be nice to see that before putting your money down,' she said.
(Additional reporting by Sarah McBride and Deepa Seetharaman in San Francisco, Editing by Edwin Chan and Peter Henderson)
Alibaba Ipo Prospectus Pdf
Get the latest Alibaba stock price here.
Watch Zuck, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the gang go to bat for Facebook in the promo video for its pre-IPO roadshow. For your reading pleasure, I’ve written a sportscaster-style play-by-play followed by some highlights. Check out to learn about Facebook’s mission, products and platform, advertising, finance, and future without having to click past all the SEC disclaimers and sit through the 30-minute video.
The roadshow site also hosts the prospectus for investors (embedded below). The prospectus include essentially the same information as Facebook’s S-1 filing to IPO, but with more polished formatting.
Facebook IPO Roadshow Play-By-Play
[Be warned, I’m going to mix a bunch of sports metaphors, and even anthropomorphize several Facebook products.]
https://cleversay823.weebly.com/blog/pic-collage-for-windows-7. First we’ve got a brief intro from Facebook’s CFO, and already the video begins to lose the favor of this commentator, as it frustratingly does not allow fast-forwarding or rewinding:.
Then Mark Zuckerberg slides in(to) second.
Download zoo tycoon 3 full free. “I grew up with the internet. You know in middle school I used search engines like Google and Yahoo and I just thought they were the most amazing thing. This complete symbol of the age we live in, where now you have access to all of this information. The thing that seemed like it was missing was always just people, right. So, the most interesting stuff that you care about the most is actually whats going on in the lives of your friends, or the people around you. And, um, there wasn’t really any way for that to be on the web. People had to share that themselves. That wasn’t just out there ready to be indexed.
Even from very early on when we were just building this thing for one school, there was this concept of what it could turn into. We just weren’t sure then we were the ones to do it.”
VP of Product Chris Cox is next up to bat, discussing how when Facebook started, you only had one photo. Your profile photo. But people were changing it a lot. Facebook realized it should let users upload whole albums — the feature that would cause Facebook’s popularity to boom.
After a few words about the social graph and The Hacker Way, Zuckerberg and Cox tag-team the Products segment. First they take a swing at Timeline, which Zuckerberg calls “the story of your life on a single page”. Next is your personal, always-up-to-date news feed.
Looking to keep morale high as they enter the second quarter of the video, Cox announces “We’re now changing within a generation the fabric of how humanity communicates with itself.” Then he follows it up with a flurry of stats, though the video shows its age as some are already outdated.
Hoping to gain favor with the roaring crowds of developers, Zuckerberg claims that as much traffic as Facebook gets, the company thinks what other people can build on top of it will be even more important. Long-time teammate The New York Times and new draft pick Spotify are commended for their contributions to the platform.
Cox then brings in Facebook’s new bruiser, the powerful but controversial frictionless sharing. This commentator applauds him for his traffic driving abilities and sees his style as the future, but others say auto-publishing in-app activities is fighting dirty.
Just before half-time, COO Sheryl Sandberg takes the field defend Facebook’s business model. Name-checking Nike and J.Crew, Sandberg says people connect to businesses just like they do to people. Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream handles the half-time show, singing that it makes $3 in sales for every $1 it spends on Facebook.
Sandberg kicks off the second half with heavy hitting stats about how Facebook ads are 90% accurate compared to an industry average of 30%. For the 7th inning stretch entertainment, American Express performs a presentation about Small Business Saturday.
Facebook subs in its CFO David Ebersman to power through its financial info give its starters a rest. He scores with a previously unseen graph of average revenue per user broken out by geography, and by confirming Facebook may charge non-game app developers less than 30% in taxes on payments.
In the final minutes, Zuckerberg predicts his team’s success next season. “5 years out.almsot every app you use is going to be integrated with Facebook in some way.”
And for the buzzer beater, Facebook’s star player announces. “We make decisions not optimizing for what’s gonna happen in the next year, but what’s gonna set us up to really be in this world where every product experience you have is social and that’s all powered by Facebook.”
…but wait. Extra innings! After the video’s listed stop time, liquor brand Diageo makes one last play to convince investors that advertisers are loyal to Facebook.
Alibaba Group Ipo Prospectus PdfHighlightsAlibaba Ipo Prospectus Pdf
Overall, the Facebook team performed well but dazzle us with many new moves. Cox and Zuckberg had solid ball control, with the CEO looking more nimble and confident than in past season. Ebersman’s late score with geographic ARPU graph was critical, and pinch hitting by Ben & Jerry’s and American Express also deserves a mention.
Alibaba Ipo Prospectus Pdf Pdf
The judges are now making their decisions, and we’ll have to wait until the actual IPO later this month to see if Facebook brought home the win.
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