Alibaba invests in Chinese mall operator

Published: April 2nd, 2014

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Alibaba, a well known Chinese internet mogul has invested through shares and bonds 5.6bn Hong Kong dollars, equaling $692m and £415m into the Chinese mall operator, InTime.

This large investment has bought the company 10% of the stake and could increase up to 25% with success. Alibaba is on the rise and believes it’s recent investments into InTime will help improve mall technology increasing the patrons shopping experience all the while building it’s portfolio as it seeks to open for the first time in the US market.

The debut of the company into the public market could be one of the largest of it’s kind for an internet trading firm surpassing Facebook’s offerings in 2012. The estimation of opening is around $15 billion. In recent dealings, Alibaba bought into 60% of network, Chinavision and invested over $200 million into a chat application known as Tango. Daniel Zhang, COO of Alibaba, is stated as saying: "We see significant oppor tunities to extend our e-commerce platform to physical retail."