China's Alibaba files for IPO

Alibaba filed documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Tuesday for its US stock listing and is aiming to raise $1 billion (717.6 million euros) in a long-awaited initial public offering (IPO).

The filing is expected to lead to the technology industry's biggest initial public offering since the micro-blogging site Twitter raised $1.8 billion in its debut last fall. Some industry analysts have predicted that Alibaba's IPO could even eclipse the $16 billion (11.5 billion euros) raised by Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook in 2012.

The group, founded by Jack Ma, has not yet revealed how much stock will be sold in the IPO. These details will emerge over the next three to four months as the IPO progresses.

The company has also not revealed which US exchange its stock will trade on.

The initial filing with the SEC noted that a range of investment banks will lead the offering including Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Citi.

Alibaba is based in Hangzhou and owns two of China's most popular online shopping services, Taobao and TMall. The e-commerce powerhouse makes more money than US giants Amazon and eBay combined.

Yahoo has also benefited from Alibaba's success as its 24-percent stake in the Chinese company has helped its own stock to more than double over the past two years. With the listing, Yahoo is supposed to sell its 208 million shares.

China's Twitter service, Sina Weibo made its debut on the US Nasdaq exchange in April, with shares jumping 19 percent on its first day of trade on Wall Street.

hc/jm (AFP, AP)