Chinese Internet corporation Alibaba is seeking to go public in Hong Kong. The company wants to take the equivalent of up to 12.5 billion euros.
Alibaba offer up to 575 million shares at 188 Hong Kong dollars, the company said. That could bring in the group up to 13.8 billion US dollar. Before that, much more had been expected. On Wednesday, for example, the South China Morning Post, which belongs to Alibaba, reported a target of up to $ 15 billion.
Posting moved
With the IPO in Hong Kong Alibaba also meets the wishes of the government. Beijing keeps encouraging the country's big tech companies to go public in China. A technology exchange in Shanghai is planned on the model of the US stock exchange Nasdaq.
The IPO in Hong Kong is already the second for Alibaba: The group is also listed in New York. Actually, Alibaba wanted to go to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in the summer, but then looked at the protests in the former British Crown Colony and the trade conflict with the United States initially off.
Government expects deep recession
The government of the Special Administrative Region expects the protests to be a deep recession. In 2019, gross domestic product (GDP) is now expected to decline by 1.3 percent, the government said. So far, she had expected a drop of 0.1 percent. The forecast applies to growth in the full year compared to the previous year. It would be the first year-long recession in Hong Kong since the global financial crisis a good decade ago.
In the shorter term, the Special Administrative Region is already in recession. In the second quarter, GDP declined 0.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, down 3.2 percent in the third quarter. These numbers confirmed the government.
Analysts talk about a "technical" recession when a country's economic performance falls two quarters in a row. Such a mathematical downturn differs from a recession over a whole year, which is mostly more severe.