Chinese online retailer Alibaba has smashed records with the largest public offering in US history – and is now as valuable as Facebook after just one day on Wall Street.
The e-commerce powerhouse, which sells anything from fat suits to live animals, started the day valued more than Amazon and eBay at $168 billion, and sent tremors through the market as it floated stocks priced at $68 per share.
The valuation also makes it larger than Amazon and eBay combined.
Shares quickly jumped to $98 once trading finally launched at 11.53am – after a delayed start due to an overwhelming influx of orders.
Now, the firm is worth $230 billion – more than Facebook – as stocks closed at $93, up 38 per cent.
Founded by Jack Ma in his apartment in 1999, Alibaba now accounts for 80 percent of online sales in China.
Shares of Alibaba soared 38 percent on their Friday trading debut, the biggest first-day jump for an IPO of at least $10 billion.
Its dominance of a booming e-commerce industry in the country of 1.36 billion people attracted interest from money managers including Fidelity Investments, BlackRock Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc., who each asked for at least $1 billion of shares, people familiar with the matter said last week.
The number of Chinese Internet users has grown to 632 million, greater than the population of any other country except India, and could exceed 850 million by 2015.
Watch this video from Bloomberg discussing the deal: