HONG KONG (Thomson Financial) - Alibaba.com, China's business-to-business website, will start trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Tuesday after pricing its initial public offering at 13.50 Hong Kong dollars each, raising 11.6 billion dollars.
Alibaba.com sold 858.9 million shares to the public and will use the proceeds for acquisitions, expansion and working capital, the company said in a statement to the Hong Kong bourse late Sunday.
About 60 percent of the proceeds will be used to fund acquisitions and to boost its technology, it said. Another 20 percent would be spent to boost operations in the mainland and overseas and the rest would be for working capital, it said.
Alibaba.com's IPO is the world's biggest IPO to date, after Google's 1.7 billion US dollar share sale in 2004.
The company's IPO has attracted more than 450 billion Hong Kong dollars from local retail investors, while orders for its international tranche totaled 160 billion US dollars. These inflows caused the Hong Kong dollar to appreciate against the US dollar, prompting the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to intervene by selling its currency to keep it from rising beyond the official peg.
The Hong Kong dollar is pegged at 7.80 US dollars.
(1 US dollar = 7.80 Hong Kong dollars)
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