Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group set a new record for the largest US-listed initial public offering last Friday. Today, the company extended that title to become the world's largest IPO as underwriters exercised an option to buy an additional 48 million shares in the wake of heavy demand from investors.
Alibaba raised $21.8 billion last Friday and with the additional shares on the table, the company has now raised a total of $25 billion. In doing so, Alibaba surpassed the Agricultural Bank of China as the previous IPO record holder at $22.1 billion back in 2010.
The extra shares came from Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma, Vice Chairman Joseph Tsai and Yahoo. All said and done, Yahoo was the largest seller in the IPO as they offloaded 140.3 million shares total - eclipsing Alibaba's 123 million offering.
The IPO price was set at $68 although shares opened up more than 35 percent above that and climbed even higher to 38 percent. As Bloomberg points out, that was the biggest first-day jump for an IPO of at least $10 billion. As of writing, shares are valued at $90 each - down 4.14 percent on the day.
Alibaba may not be a household name in the US but as the IPO has shown, they're a really big deal. The Chinese company owns and operates two main websites, Taobao Marketplace and Taobao Mall - both of which sell goods to consumers. The company has been described as a mix between Amazon and eBay although they offer more products and have a much larger footprint.