Alibaba Group

Alibaba is the largest Chinese Internet commerce company. The main activities are trading operations between companies under the B2B scheme and online retail. The company also owns one of the world's largest cloud computing infrastructures and assets in the media and entertainment industries.

Aktivs

As of March 2015, Alibaba Group's assets include:

• Alibaba Cloud,
• 1688.com,
• Alibaba.com - B2B-platform,
• Alibabagroup.com,
• Aliexpress.com - online store,
• Alimama.com
• Alipay.com - payment system,
• Alitrip.com
• Aliyun.com - cloud platform,
• Itao.com,
• Juhuasuan.com - discounter, analogue of Groupon in China
• Net.cn,
• Taobao.com - online auction,
• Tmall - online store,
• Ttpod.com,
• Ucweb.com
• Xiami.com

Business structure

2023: Split into six companies

On March 28, 2023, the Chinese Internet commerce company Alibaba announced a large-scale restructuring, during which the business will be divided into six key divisions. It would mark the largest reorganization of a tech conglomerate in its 24-year history.

Alibaba is facing a slowdown and tighter regulation from Beijing. As a result, the company's market value has shrunk by billions of dollars. The comprehensive reorganization is designed to improve performance and improve competitiveness. Each business group will have its own management, including its board of directors. The units will be able to raise external capital and plan an initial public offering (IPO). Overall control will be exercised by Alibaba Group. The following business groups will be formed:

• Cloud Intelligence Group - cloud products and services;

• Taobao Tmall Commerce Group - local online commerce platforms;

• Local Services Group - delivery services;

• Cainiao Smart Logistics Group - logistics;

• Global Digital Commerce Group - AliExpress platform;

• Digital Media and Entertainment Group - games, entertainment content and other web products.

Alibaba itself will be reorganized into a holding company structure, while Daniel Zhang will retain the position of group CEO. It is noted that the most likely place for the IPO of new units is Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, Alibaba founder Jack Ma reappeared in China on March 27, 2023 after a lengthy absence. Ma founded Alibaba in the 1990s and was once China's richest man. He has rarely appeared in public since November 2020, when he publicly criticized Chinese regulators and financial systems during a speech in Shanghai.^[1]

Business in Russia

Main article: Алибаба.ком (ru)

• СП AliExpress Russia

Performance indicators

2023: On the list of companies with the largest R&D costs

2016

Turnover of $1 billion in 2016 - in 8 minutes, in 2017 - in 2 minutes

History

2023

Alibaba curtails quantum computing lab due to lack of money

On November 27, 2023, the Chinese technology corporation Alibaba Group Holding announced the closure of the quantum computing research laboratory. This decision is associated with a lack of money and the need to improve financial performance in an unstable macroeconomic situation. Read more here.

Eddie Wu's appointment as new CEO

On June 20, 2023, the CEO of Alibaba Group Holding was announced. It was Eddie Wu, who previously headed the Taobao and Tmall Group, which unites a number of Alibaba e-commerce platforms. He will also join the company's board of directors. Read more here.

Announcement of recruitment of 15,000 employees

On May 25, 2023, the Chinese corporation Alibaba Group Holding announced plans to increase the number of personnel. It is expected that by the end of 2023 about 15 thousand additional jobs will be created.

It says the new hires will be spread across the six main business units that will emerge from the corporation's comprehensive reorganization. Alibaba intends to hire about 3 thousand university graduates who have received education in popular areas. These can be technologies of artificial intelligence, processing big data, etc.

Alibaba does not disclose the number of employees in individual units. But it is known that as of December 2022, a total of 235,216 people worked in the corporation. By the end of March 2023, the number of employees decreased by 4524. Overall, Alibaba cut 19,725 full-time employees, or 7.7% of staff, in the 12 months (by May 2023).

Thus, the appearance of 15 thousand new positions does not fully compensate for the loss of personnel. It is noted that technology companies in China rarely publicly announce job cuts, usually referring to layoffs as business restructuring. Alibaba said that the information that appeared on the Internet about the corporation's plans to reduce to 25% of its workforce in various business units is not true. Moreover, according to Alibaba, thousands of new vacancies appear on the company's website every day.

Every year new specialists come to us, and old colleagues leave. Changing the composition of workers is what all companies face. In Alibaba, talent comes and goes, and that's fine, says the Chinese corporation.[2]

Investing more than $1 billion in the development of logistics and data centers in Turkey

In early January 2023, Alibaba announced the construction of a logistics center at Istanbul Airport and a data center near Ankara. Investments in projects will amount to more than $1 billion.

Alibaba chose Turkey to expand because of its powerful manufacturing capacity, which could support e-commerce and become part of the company's supply chain in Europe and the Middle East, according to the company's president, Michael Evans. The expansion of commerce and cloud technology is expected to boost the company's revenue.

According to Michael Evans, the company intends to build a logistics base at Istanbul Airport, as well as Turkey's largest data center with an area of ​ ​ 200 thousand square meters. m, which will be located in Temelli. As the president of Alibaba noted, the base in Istanbul could become a key point in the supply chain of goods to Europe and the Middle East. And large-scale investments in Turkish infrastructure will eventually allow Alibaba to significantly increase revenue. Evans, a former Goldman Sachs Group executive, called on Turkey to improve e-commerce rules to address "some flaws" to ensure fair competition, Sabah said without details.

I think it's profitable to be a public company. But this must be decided by the management of Trendyol. If they want to go public, we will support them. I think that will happen as Trendyol grows.

Trendyol Group president Kaglayan Cetin, who also participated in the Sabah interview, told local media that the company had no urgent need to raise capital by going public.^[3]

2022

Tencent and Alibaba AI systems understand Chinese speech better than people

On November 28, 2022, the results of testing language models of Tencent and Alibaba Group based on artificial intelligence (AI) were released. Smart algorithms are reportedly able to understand Chinese better than people do. Read more here.

Laying off more than 9,000 staff

On August 6, 2022, it became known about mass layoffs at Alibaba Group Holding amid how the company faced declining sales amid declining buying activity and unfavorable economic factors in China.

A total of 9,241 employees left Alibaba in the second quarter of 2022, reducing the company's total workforce to 245,700. In the first half of 2022, the company cut 13,616 jobs. The layoff marked the first reduction in the company's headcount since March 2016.

According to Benzinga, the staff reduction indicates a resumption of Alibaba's attempts to optimize costs and increase efficiency, as the company continues to experience pressure from regulators, weak consumer activity and a slowdown in the Chinese economy.

Alibaba has been on the radar of Chinese regulators since the end of 2020 and has had to endure a series of restrictive measures, including a major fine. The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic downturn have further exacerbated the situation.

Reducing the number of employees and reducing non-core activities could help Alibaba focus on core business and improve profitability, according to Cheng Yu, a research fellow at Beijing's Kandong Research Institute.

Alibaba has a variety of destinations that are difficult to profit from and do not keep its core business functioning, "Cheng said. It is necessary to get rid of such enterprises so that the company can reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Still, Alibaba Chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang Yong said the company will hire about 6,000 new university graduate employees in 2022.^[4]

2021

Investing $192 million in AliExpress Russia

In 2021, Alibaba invested $192 million in AliExpress Russia. This became known from the financial statements that the Chinese Internet giant published in July 2022. Read more here.

Ex-Alibaba employee cleared of rape charges against colleague

In early September 2021, Chinese prosecutors closed the case against a former Alibaba Group employee accused of sexually assaulting a female colleague. The authorities said that the incident refers more to the commission of a violent indecent act towards a person by intimidation or assault, rape cannot be called.

An Alibaba Group employee surnamed Wang was detained by police in August 2021 after a female Alibaba employee posted a post on the company's corporate blog saying a manager and client sexually assaulted her during a business trip to the eastern Chinese city of Jinan.

She said bosses and human resources department did not take her complaint seriously, prompting a fierce public backlash against the e-commerce giant, which later did fire Wang and suspend other executives. Jinan police charged both men with committing violent indecent acts but did not provide details of the incident. The employee in her post said that during the incident she was almost unconscious and woke up without clothes.

In response to the prosecutors "decision, Alibaba said it supported a zero-tolerance policy on sexual violence. Chinese law determines that those who use violence or force indecent acts against others can be sentenced to up to five years in prison, but the incident with an Alibaba employee does not imply criminal liability. Wang, who is no longer accused of rape, will still spend 15 days in custody as punishment.

Alibaba fired Bloomberg 10 employees for sharing screenshots of a colleague's account of sexual assault allegations, the agency said, citing people familiar with the matter.^[5]

Firing executives over rape of female employee

In early August 2021, Alibaba management decided to fire the manager, whom one of the company's employees publicly accused of rape.

The injured employee wrote a post on the Alibaba corporate blog, where she reported that she was a victim of rape. The incident occurred at the end of July 2021 during a business trip, she was attacked by the head and client of the company.

The employee initially turned to the company's human resources department and demanded that the attacker be fired, but there was no reaction from the management. After that, she decided to talk about the incident on the corporate network.

According to the employee, the boss forced her to go on a business trip to meet with one of Alibaba's customers. During the meeting, the man persuaded the victim to have an intimate relationship and continued to make attempts, despite the refusal. The employee does not exclude that she could have been mixed with a relaxant in the drink, as she cannot remember what happened to her after meeting in a restaurant. In the morning, the woman ended up in the client's hotel room, and CCTV cameras recorded that the victim's boss entered and left this room several times.

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang immediately responded to the incident after the publicity. He announced the dismissal of the accused employee and the investigation. Zhang also said the president of City Retail's division and the head of human resources department resigned over the incident and Alibaba's chief human resources officer was reprimanded.

Alibaba Group has a zero-tolerance policy on sexual misconduct, and ensuring safe workplaces for all of our employees is Alibaba's top priority, a company spokesman said in a comment to Reuters when asked about the incident.[6]

Delisting key Chinese businesses and raising income tax

In August 2021, Alibaba warns of higher taxes due to increased sanctions by the Chinese government; in the future, most Internet companies are likely to no longer be able to use the 10% income tax rate.

The Chinese company told investors that some Alibaba units lost preferential tax status, the government stopped treating them like key software enterprises (KSE) - which provided a preferential tax rate of 10%.

While the country's standard income tax rate is 25%, high-tech businesses enjoy a 15% rate and an even more generous 10% rate is given to those who work with essential software.

Leaked 1.1 billion user records

In mid-June 2021, Alibaba announced that it had been the victim of a months-long cyber attack in which an employee of Alibaba's consulting company, using web scanning software, stole 1.1 billion user records, including their names, phone numbers and other data. Alibaba claims that the attacker did not sell this data.

A Chinese court sentenced an employee and his employer to more than three years in prison. Both people were also fined 100,000 yuan and 350,000 yuan, respectively, for "encroaching on citizens' personal information." According to Alibaba, customer data did not reach third parties, users did not suffer any financial losses. An Alibaba spokesman noted that the company pays special attention to data security and privacy.

Taobao allocates significant funds to prevent unauthorized data collection on the platform as privacy and data security is paramount, a company spokesperson said and added that the team will continue to work with law enforcement to protect the interests of its customers and partners.

The data breach of Alibaba's customers comes amid increased Chinese authorities' scrutiny of IT giants' activities that involve the collection, processing and storage of user data arrays. From September 1, 2021, a law will begin to operate in the country, which gives the authorities the right to fine and close technology companies in case of "incorrect handling of key state data." In addition, China is developing a law on the protection of personal data of users, which should be adopted later in 2021.^[7]

Fine for pressure on sellers of goods $2.78 billion - the largest in the history of China

The regulator China fined Alibaba $2.78 billion dollars for violating antitrust laws.

The company has been accused of pressuring retailers to offer their products exclusively in their online store.

This is the largest fine ever issued by the country's regulators.

Building a company to develop electric vehicles

In mid-January 2021 Alibaba , in cooperation state with SAIC Motor and the regional government's high-tech investment fund Shanghai , she created a company for development. electric vehicles The partnership results in Alibaba's first all-electric sedan under the new IM brand. More. here

2020

Global Job Abandonment

On October 27, 2020, it became known about Alibaba's refusal from job titles at the global level, including in Russia, where the Cainiao Network logistics subsidiary joined the project.

We conducted a study and found out that when a person sees a high-level leader in a chat, in most cases he will prefer to smooth out the wording than speak out directly. In order to avoid such situations, it was decided to remove the names of positions from all internal communications, "Evgenia Volkova, leader of the HR function of the Cainiao Network in Russia, told RBC.

According to the new rules, employees will see the name of the function instead of positions in corporate messengers, on intranet portals or in e-mail. For example, instead of the position "marketing director" will be written "marketing function" or "corporate communications function," she said.

The study showed that such a system is very important for Generation Z (born after 2000). According to Evgenia Volkova, so university graduates can immediately communicate on equal terms with top management without reference to their position. This change has improved the quality of work - in some projects, the speed of implementation has increased by 50%, she noted.

Volkova added that now in the corporate messenger, any employee can write or call a leader of any level, including the founder of the group Jack Ma and CEO Daniel Zhang.

The company noted that during the quarantine period caused by the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Alibaba employees began to communicate online more often and, as the group negotiation process showed, job assignments negatively affect the general discussion, and when interacting directly with management, initiative decreases.^[8]

Purchase of Sun Art Retail Group hypermarket chain for $3.6 billion

On October 19, 2020, Alibaba Group announced the purchase of Sun Art Retail Group, China's largest hypermarket chain, for $3.6 billion. The deal was concluded with Auchan Corporation, which thereby leaves the market of the Middle Kingdom. Read more here.

2019

Hong Kong Stock Offering and Raising $12.9 Billion

On November 26, 2019, trading in Alibaba shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange started. Thanks to the secondary listing, the company will be able to earn about $12.9 billion.

By the opening of the site in Hong Kong, Alibaba quotes rose by 7.7%. Investor interest in the company's shares was so great that transactions were concluded at 14 billion Alibaba securities for a total value of $1.8 billion. This surge in trading lifted the overall turnover of shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange by 75% compared with the previous day.

By the close of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, Alibaba's stock value was 187.6 Hong Kong dollars (about $24), while the shares were listed at a price of 176 Hong Kong dollars. In total, the company allocated 500 million shares for placement on the new exchange.^[9]

Today's listing of Alibaba was a milestone. Better late than never. It took five years to wait, but finally the company returned "home" and held a placement here, "said Charles Li, executive director of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, at the start of trading.

A fine of $250 million for hiding counterfeit data on sites

On April 29, 2019, Alibaba agreed to pay $250 million to settle lawsuits in which investors accuse the company of hiding information about counterfeit products on its websites before going public.

Alibaba was sued in 2015 after the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) released an expert report. It claimed that the company allowed the sale of counterfeit products on its platforms - counterfeiting goods of well-known brands. Moreover, at one point, most of the products on Alibaba's sites were counterfeit.

The document was compiled based on the results of a meeting of Alibaba management with the authorities in July 2014 - two months before the company's placement on the New York stock exchange. As part of that IPO, the Chinese Internet giant raised $25 billion.

However, this Alibaba managed to agree with SAIC to postpone the publication of the report so as not to overshadow the planned exit to the stock exchange.

SAIC released the document after the IPO and, when it did, Alibaba's US depositary shares fell 12.8 per cent in value. Investors accused the company of securities fraud.

Alibaba itself and its immediate leaders do not admit guilt. However, they agreed to settle the proceedings by paying compensation. The plaintiffs' lawyers called the concluded agreement "essentially fair, reasonable and adequate."

Alibaba has repeatedly been accused of using its online trading platforms to sell fakes. Well-known brands such as Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent have sued the Chinese company.

By April 2019, Alibaba, as well as Amazon eBay other large e-commerce companies, are actively taking measures to combat the spread of counterfeit goods and are investing a lot of money in this, notes. Reuters^[10]

2018

Data Artisans Big Data Software Developer Purchase for $103 Million

In early January 2019, Alibaba Group acquired big data software developer Data Artisans for $103 million. Read more here.

Building a Semiconductor Business

On September 19, 2018, Alibaba Group announced the creation of a semiconductor division - Pingtouge. The Chinese internet giant has decided to develop its own processors to reduce dependence on foreign technologies. In addition, the initiative reflects Alibaba's desire to continue strengthening its position in the cloud services and Internet of Things markets. Read more here.

Investment in the Swiss-Russian developer of AR solutions for WayRay cars

September 18, 2018 it became known about the attraction of WayRay investments in the amount of $80 million. The financial deal headed by Porsche was attended by the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) together with a consortium of sovereign wealth funds (Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain), including the Russian-Japanese Investment Fund (created by RDIF and JBIC), as well as Hyundai Motor, Alibaba Group, AFK Sistema, China Merchants Capital funds and JVC Kenwood. Read more here.

Alibaba de facto chief Jack Ma resigns

On September 10, 2018, Jack Ma, on his birthday, announced his resignation from the post of chairman of the board of directors and actual head of the Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group. The businessman decided to focus on charity work and education. Read more here.

Consolidation of the Medical Business

On May 29, 2018, Alibaba Group announced the consolidation of the medical business. Under the terms of the agreement, Alibaba Health Information Technology (Ali Health) will buy another subsidiary of the Chinese Internet giant - Ali JK Nutritional Products Holding Limited for 10.6 billion Hong Kong dollars (about $1.35 billion). Read more here.

Creating artificial intelligence that understands text better than people

In January 2018, Alibaba introduced an artificial intelligence system that was the first in the world to surpass people in understanding the read text.

The Alibaba neural network was tested in one of the most difficult tests in the field of cognitive word processing - Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD). It was created at Stanford University. The questionnaire includes more than 100 thousand pairs of questions and answers based on more than 500 articles from Wikipedia. The answers to the questions could be either directly indicated in the articles on the portal, or follow from the read fragment of the text.

In SQuAD, Alibaba's development scored 82.44 points out of 100 possible, while the highest in humans was 82.304 points. In 2018, Microsoft's AI also outpaced the human result with a score of 82.65 points, less than Alibaba's. Microsoft broke the people's record after Alibaba.

According to Luo Si, a senior researcher in natural speech processing at the Alibaba-created Institute of Technology and Artificial Intelligence (Luo Si), the results suggest that machines can answer objective questions with great accuracy, such as the question of what causes rain.

This technology will gradually find application in various fields, in particular, in the creation of museum textbooks, online interaction with patients on medical issues, in an unprecedented way reducing the need to provide data to a person, she said.

Computers catch up or even outperform people in many areas, Bloomberg reported, but some activities are still not available to modern technology. In particular, this applies to natural language processing algorithms: efficient extraction of individual information from the text, as well as its assimilation for further use, until recently remained the privilege of people.^[11]

2017

Alibaba invests $30 million in IT infrastructure in Russia

In November 2017, it became known about the $30 million investment of the Internet giant Alibaba Group in the development of its IT infrastructure in Russia. As part of this project, the company leased a data center. Read more here.

15 billion investments in innovation and the construction of an R&D center in Moscow

On October 11, 2017, Alibaba Group announced a major investment in research and development of new technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing.

Alibaba launched an initiative called DAMO Academy (Discovery, Adventure, Momentum and Outlook - discoveries, adventures, momentum and perspectives). As part of it, the company will open several R&D laboratories -  in Beijing and Hangzhou (China), San Mateo and Bellevue (USA), Moscow (Russia), Tel Aviv ( Israel) and Singapore.

Specialists from these centers (in total, it is planned to recruit about 100 people) will work on financial technologies, artificial intelligence and quantum computing. By October 2017, Alibaba employs about 25,000 engineers.

Alibaba CEO Jack Ma noted that the DAMO Academy program should not only contribute to the company's earnings, but also  solve socially important problems. In addition, the new research infrastructure will help Alibaba fulfill the task of increasing its client base to 2 billion over 20 years, the Internet holding said in a statement to Reuters.^[12]

Alibaba DAMO Academy will take an important place in the development of next-generation technologies that will stimulate the growth of Alibaba and our partners, said Jeff Zhang, CTO of the company.

The Wall Street Journal of October 11, 2017 states that over the previous three years, Alibaba spent about $6 billion on research and development (R&D), including $2.6 billion in the fiscal year ended March 2017.

Alibaba is increasing investment in part because Beijing prioritizes financing projects in the field, and by quantum computing AI big data urging provincial authorities, universities, military enterprises and private companies to step up in developing advanced technologies in areas that China lag behind developed countries.

AliExpress and Tmall joined RAEK

On October 3, 2017, the Russian Association of Electronic Communications announced its entry into the organization of the Alibaba Group division, which is responsible for e-commerce and the AliExpress and Tmall brands in Russia.

The application to join the association was submitted shortly before the launch of one of Alibaba's main brands - the Tmall marketplace: it is built on the basis of the AliExpress platform and focused on selling an assortment of more expensive price categories from its warehouse in Russia.

According to RAEK Director Sergei Plugotarenko, the entry of AliExpress and Tmall into the ranks of RAEK members will have a positive impact on the e-commerce industry.

2016: Alisher Usmanov sells company shares

In 2016, funds investing Alisher Usmanov's funds sold Alibaba shares purchased in 2011 in the amount of $1.6 billion. Part of Alibaba shares was sold back in 2015. At ^[13] same time, Usmanov, who got rid of Apple shares in 2014, confessed that^[14] still left a small stake^[15]. JD.com, where Usmanov retains his position, and Alibaba Group are competitors. Alibaba has its own similar internet platform Tmall.com.

2015: Clouds: Alibaba challenges Amazon and Microsoft

On July 29, 2015, it became known about Alibaba Group's plans for the global cloud market. The Chinese internet giant is set to compete with leaders such as Amazon and Microsoft.

According to the news agency Reuters , citing Alibaba's statement Aliyun , the company plans to invest $1 billion in the development of its cloud business (allocated to the division) at the global level. Some of this money will go to the construction of data centers in Singapore, and Japan in the To Europe Middle East. In early 2015, Aliyun opened its first foreign one - DPC in Silicon Valley. Another such facility is planned to be launched in the eastern part. USA^[16]

"This additional investment of $1 billion is just the beginning," says Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang. "We hope Aliyun will empower its customers and partners and help companies improve their core infrastructure."

According to Aliyun President Simon Hu, most of the company's clients with foreign business are registered in China. Attracting customers from the United States is very difficult, since the Aliyun brand and its products are unfamiliar there, but this does not prevent the company from making ambitious plans for international expansion.

"It

took Amazon 10 years to achieve today's numbers. Aliyun has been operating for the sixth year, and we hope that we can catch up or get ahead of Amazon in the next 3-4 years, "The Wall Street Journal quoted Mr. Hu as saying in a July 29, 2015 publication

.

To meet its goal, Alibaba must at least maintain the high growth rate of the cloud business, which in the first quarter of 2015 was measured at 82% on market revenue of 388 million yuan (about $63 million). For comparison, in April-June 2015, the turnover in the Amazon Web Services division reached $1.82 billion, an increase of 81% on an annualized basis.

"Amazon,

Microsoft and others have already laid the foundation for us, adapting to the clouds of the United States and Europe, which provided us with more opportunities to join this struggle," said Simon Hu.

As of the end of July 2014, about 1.4 million customers used Aliyun services, most of whom represent small and medium-sized businesses. The company is considered the leader of the Chinese cloud market, the volume of which analysts at Bain & Co. estimate at $1.5 billion at the end of 2013, predicting its growth to $20 billion by 2020.^[17]

2014

Largest IPO in history

Alibaba listed the stock on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, at $68 apiece. By the close of trading on the same day, the securities rate rose by 38.07% to $93.89. Moreover, trading immediately opened at $92.7 per share, and the peak value during the trading session reached $99.7 at all.

For 2014, Alibaba Group is the largest Internet company in China with 279 million active users and quarterly revenue of $2.54 billion.

Alibaba Group bypassed the social network in September 2014 Facebook in terms of the amount of funds raised during the initial public offering (Initial Public Offering,). IPO The company managed to bail out $21.8 billion from the sale of securities on the first day of trading. Facebook at its own IPO in May 2012 raised only a little more than $16 billion^[18]

In terms of the amount of funds raised, Alibaba bypassed not only Facebook. This volume turned out to be more than any other company in the US stock market. In other words, Alibaba's IPO was the largest in history.

Prior to that, the record belonged to the Visa payment system, which raised $17.9 billion. This is followed by the Italian energy company Enel ($16.5 billion). Facebook owns fourth place.

Alibaba also beat Facebook in market capitalization. According to the results of the first day of trading, the market value of the Chinese holding reached $231.4 billion, compared with $202.6 billion from Facebook.

In terms of capitalization, Alibaba entered the top twenty companies, ahead of, in addition to Facebook, Verizon Communications, HSBC Holdings, Procter & Gamble and JPMorgan Chase. Apple tops this list with a market value of $604.5 billion.

Facebook was valued at $104 billion during its IPO in 2012, which is almost 2.5 times lower than Alibaba Group.

Alibaba also outperformed its direct competitors in market capitalization - the world's largest online store Amazon, its market value is $153.1 billion, and eBay ($65 billion).

Alisher Usmanov invests $1.6 billion in the company

In 2014, about 22% of the Alibaba group belongs to the American company Yahoo. In March 2014, it became known that billionaire Alisher Usmanov became a shareholder of the company, investing $1.6 billion in the Chinese company. This was done through a consortium, which included the DST Global fund, managed by Yuri Milner and investing mainly by Usmanov, as well as Silver Lake and the Chinese fund Yunfeng Capital. The deal had the form of buying shares in an offer from Alibaba employees and co-owners. At that time, the value of Alibaba was estimated at $32 billion, that is, the share bought by the Usmanov consortium was less than 5%. At the end of 2015, Usmanov announced that he had already sold part of Alibaba's shares. He indicated the profitability of investments at the level of 500-600%.

2011: Milner offers Alibaba Group to acquire a stake in it

September 23, 2011 it became known that the investment fund DST Global headed by Yuri Milner, together with the American fund Silver Lake and the Chinese private investment firm Yunfeng Capital, put forward a tender offer for employees and shareholders of the Chinese Alibaba Group to acquire their shares.

The total amount of the tender offer will be $1.6 billion, according to All Things Digital, citing informed sources. The deal, along with DST, Silver Lake and Yunfeng, will also involve Singapore-based investment firm Temasek.

According to sources, the parties finally agreed on the deal on September 22, and soon the proposal will be reported to Alibaba Group employees through the company's internal blog. If investors manage to redeem shares for the entire amount of $1.6 billion, they will receive at their disposal about 5% of Alibaba Group, and the total value of this holding as part of this proposal was estimated at $32 billion. DST and Silver Lake also want voting rights in Alibaba's management.

According to analysts, one of the main reasons for this proposal for Alibaba Group is to provide an opportunity for its employees to sell shares in the company. In China, there are no active markets for trading in shares of private companies, as in the United States, while Alibaba also does not plan to go public in the near future.

During the transaction, only those Alibaba shares that are now owned by employees and shareholders of the company will be purchased, that is, the holding itself will not receive any additional funds. Completion of the transaction should take place by the end of December 2011.

The largest shareholder of the Alibaba Group holding is the American company Yahoo, which owns a 39% stake - it can now be valued at $12.5 billion. However, Yahoo will not participate in this deal, despite the fact that its representatives previously noted the possibility of a full sale of their stake in Alibaba.

On September 14, 2011, All Things Digital also reported that DST Global and Silver Lake funds, along with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, as well as a number of other investors, are considering a joint offer to fully acquire Yahoo. If this does happen, DST and Silver Lake will have a significant share of the Chinese internet giant in their hands.

1999: English teacher Jack Ma and his 18 friends start the company

Alibaba was founded by English teacher Jack Ma in 1999 with 18 friends.

Notes