In 2024, investigators in the EU seized counterfeit products with an estimated sales value of EUR 3.8 billion. The majority of them originate from China and Turkey and pose challenges for the EU.
By Marion Bergermann
The Alibaba Group is the largest IT group in China and one of the most valuable companies in the world. Table.Briefings has all the news on the online giant from the People's Republic. Who owns Alibaba? The Alibaba Group was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma and 17 friends. At the time, the group had a starting capital of USD 60,000. Alibaba originally served as a B2B platform, which it still is today. Goldman Sachs and Softbank got on board early on with USD 25 million in start-up financing. In 2005, Yahoo bought 40% of the company for one billion dollars and Softbank still owns 24.9% of the shares today. Jack Ma and his family own 2.57%. Yahoo founded the company Altaba in 2017 with the sole task of managing the Alibaba shares. In 2019, however, Yahoo decided to sell the remaining eleven percent of shares. The Americans raised around USD 40 billion in the process. Who belongs to the Alibaba Group? The then CEO Jack Ma recognized the potential of various internet services early on. He founded the auction platform Taobao back in 2003. When eBay wanted to enter the Chinese market in the same year, he strictly refused to sell the platform to the Americans. Taobao developed into the largest C2C platform in China, and in 2004 the Alibaba Group presented the Alipay payment system. By 2014, half of all online payment transactions in China were processed with Alipay. The Alibaba Group expanded the application to include various services such as online banking and microloans. Following a rebranding, the subsidiary is now called Ant Financial and is considered the world's most valuable start-up with a company value of 150 to USD 200 billion. Which subsidiaries belong to Alibaba Group? Why is Alibaba called Alibaba? The name of the Alibaba Group goes back to its founder Jack Ma and is actually based on the story collection One Thousand and One Nights. In it, the woodcutter Ali Baba discovers a treasure trove that can only be opened with the words "Open Sesame". When Jack Ma was sitting in a street café in the USA, he randomly asked thirty passers-by if they knew the name. They all answered yes. So he chose the name because of its enormous popularity.Jack Ma was CEO of the Alibaba Group until May 2013. Then Lu Zhaoxi took over this position. Jack Ma retired completely from the company in September 2019. Yong Zhang is currently the CEO of the Alibaba Group. Jack Ma has always tried to give Alibaba a customer-friendly face. When the global financial crisis began in 2007, he lowered prices for end customers by sixty percent, much to the annoyance of investors. However, the number of customers increased so much that revenue remained the same. What is the difference between Alibaba and Alibaba Group? Two types of Alibaba shares are traded on the stock exchange. The more expensive Alibaba share and the much cheaper Alibaba Group share. They are the same company. The difference is that they are two different securities on two different marketplaces. The expensive Alibaba share is traded on the New York Stock Exchange. This is where most of the trading volume takes place. These are depositary receipts – so-called ADRs (American Depositary Receipts). One ADR is worth eight shares of the Alibaba Group, which are traded in Hong Kong.Alibaba.com was already traded on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange between 2007 and 2012. However, Jack Ma delisted because he felt that pressure from shareholders was hindering the company's development. The dispute over the price reduction was one reason for this. One of Jack Ma's principles is: "Customers first, employees second, shareholders third." Alibaba's record IPO When Alibaba went public again in 2014, the company raised USD 21.8 billion. At the time, it was the largest IPO in history. Alibaba raised more money than Google, Facebook and Twitter combined. The traditional bell for the IPO was not rung by Jack Ma, as would have been customary, but by eight of the company's customers. The IPO of Alibaba's Ant Financial The financial services provider Ant Financial was due to go public at the end of 2020. Experts assumed that the company would have raised USD 37 billion. It would have been a record IPO. However, the Chinese banking regulator stopped the process. Officially, it was said that there were significant changes to the regulations, but unofficially it is suspected that Jack Ma's criticism of the Chinese financial market regulator may have had something to do with this. An example is to be made of the entrepreneur and billionaire. At the same time, fines worth billions were imposed on Alibaba. Jack Ma must also divest himself of shares in Ant Financial.
