Alibaba to meet advisors after holiday on group IPO, sources say

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Alibaba Group, China’s largest e-commerce company, will meet advisors shortly after Chinese New Year on its plans for an initial public offering, three industry sources said.

The Hangzhou-based company has not yet hired anyone to arrange the deal, but it has been reaching out to investment banks and law firms about meeting shortly after the holidays, two of the sources said. Chinese New Year runs from 10 February to 15 February in mainland China.

Hong Kong is expected to be the listing platform, the two sources said. However, New York could also be considered a possible venue, the third source said.

The deal could hit the market toward the end of the year if everything goes smoothly, the first two sources said.

“The deal size is yet to be decided, as it’s hard to estimate,” the second source added. “Nobody has any idea which assets will be included in the listed vehicle.”

Alibaba Group’s operations include Alibaba.com, an online marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with overseas buyers, as well as online retailer Tmall, auction site Taobao, daily-deals site Juhuasuan, a cloud-computing platform, and data-mining operations.

Founder Jack Ma privatized the group’s Hong Kong-listed business-to-business arm, Alibaba.com Ltd [1688:HK] last year in a USD 2.4bn deal arranged by Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse and Rothschild.

The main driver for investment banks to work on the privatization was to win the mandate for this expected IPO, the third source said.

In anticipation of the coming IPO, several foreign and domestic private equity funds recently approached some senior Alibaba Group staff about buying their stock options, a person familiar with the company said. The offers ranged from the equivalent of USD 16 to USD 22 per share, the person said.

Alibaba Group, whose shareholders include Yahoo [YHOO:US] and Japan’s Softbank [9984:JP], has been working on an internal restructuring in preparation for a future listing, this news service reported in early December. An investment invitation document circulated among private equity funds at that time suggested Alibaba would list at the group level in the second half of 2013 seeking a valuation of USD 59.55bn, according to the report.

A spokesperson for Alibaba said the company does not comment on market rumors.

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