Executive Chairman of Alibaba Group Jack Ma poses for a photo outside the New York Stock Exchange prior to the company's initial price offering (IPO)
AFP/New York
Alibaba made its long-awaited Wall Street debut Friday on the heels of a record stock offering that opens the door to global expansion for the Chinese online retail giant.
Company founder Jack Ma was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as trading opened, while a group of Alibaba customers rang the opening bell.
A trading price was not available in the early minutes after the opening, which is not uncommon for stock market debuts.
By raising as much as $25 billion, Chinese online giant Alibaba is poised to break the record for the largest initial public offering in history.
Priced at $68 a share, Alibaba would raise $21.7 billion with the offering of 320 million shares. If underwriters exercise the option for 48 million additional shares, the amount would top $25 billion, breaking the 2010 record set by China's AgBank.
Speaking to CNBC television from the trading floor, Ma said he was "very honored, and so excited" by the market debut and that he sees enormous growth potential for Alibaba.
"We have a dream," he said. "We hope in the next 15 years the world will change. We want to be bigger than Wal-Mart."
He added that he sees Alibaba as a company that will have a huge impact: "We hope people say in 15 (years) this is a company like Microsoft, like IBM."
Some analysts were also upbeat about Alibaba, which dominates the Chinese online retail space with Taobao.com and TMall.com.
The IPO allows investors to get a piece of the huge Chinese market, but it also will fuel Alibaba's international ambitions.
