Alibaba to set IPO wheels in motion as soon as 8 September
Alibaba's initial public offering to investors could be just over a week away, with the Chinese ecommerce giant expected to launch its IPO as early as the week of 8 September.
In what many are predicting will be the largest IPO in history, Alibaba could raise over $20bn (£120bn) when it lists on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Alibaba has been in dialogue with US regulators for the past month but according to the Wall Street Journal, this process will be completed by next week, paving the way for the company to push ahead with its IPO.
Following this, the company will embark on a two week roadshow with pitches to investors taking place in Asia, Europe and the US. Shares in the company could then begin trading as soon as 18 or 19 September.
It's no surprise that the forthcoming float has investors so excited; earlier this month Alibaba reported quarterly profits of 12.34bn yuan (£1.2bn) and a 46 per cent rise in revenue to 15.77bn yuan (£1.55bn).
Alibaba also recorded a surge in monthly active users to 188m – marking an increase of 25m from the previous quarter.
It is expected that Alibaba's IPO could be the largest in history, trumping the Agricultural Bank of China's 2010 float on the Shanghai market which raised $22.1bn at a $128bn valuation.
The biggest technology IPO in history currently belongs to Facebook, who raised $16bn when it floated on the NYSE in 2012. Twitter raised $2.1bn last year, slightly more than the $1.6bn Google raised almost a decade earlier in 2004.
Alibaba, which has been described as "a mix between Amazon and eBay", owns a multitude of Chinese websites such as Alibaba.com; a business-to-business trading platform, Taobao; a consumer-to-consumer shopping site and Tmall; a retail site.
The Hangzhou-based group has impressed analysts with its success in an ultra-competitive Chinese smartphone market. Mobile sales accounted for 32.8 per cent of its total gross merchandise volume in the last quarter.