中國電子商務提供商阿里巴巴欲全球擴張

Alibaba prepares for global expansion

Alibaba, the world's largest online platform for trade between businesses, intends to take advantage of the global financial crisis as an opportunity to transform itself from a China-focused e-commerce provider into a global web marketplace, according to Jack Ma, its founder and chairman.

“Before this financial crisis, we were helping China's products abroad. Now we are thinking about helping small and medium-sized enterprises in other parts of the world,” said Mr Ma in an interview.

As part of its drive for geographical diversification, Alibaba is moving its European headquarters from Geneva to London this month, as it sees the UK as one of the most promising markets for picking up suppliers.

Alibaba Group, which also includes Taobao, China's leading consumer e-commerce website, and Yahoo China, plans to increase its current workforce of 12,000 by more than 4,000 this year. Alibaba.com, the Hong Kong-listed flagship which operates the business-to-business trading platform, reported revenues of Rmb2.2bn ($321m) for the first nine months of 2008.

Although Alibaba serves buyers and sellers all over the world, Chinese companies seeking buyers overseas account for the bulk of its revenues so far. But as demand from the US and Europe has dropped off, the company has launched programmes to support domestic trade and exports from other countries to China.

Given that China's imports have also entered a period of sharp contraction, falling 13 per cent year-on-year in November and 16.3 per cent last month, observers are likely to challenge the near-term viability of Mr Ma's plan.

“Most e-commerce plays are directly dependent on the level of underlying economic activity, and hence they are among the most cyclical of internet business models,” said Citigroup in a recent report.

However, Mr Ma's plans are longer-term. Through programmes that encourage businesses to export to China, he hopes to attract suppliers from other regions that would then stay with Alibaba in better times.

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