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Alibaba's US IPO Could Top $20 Billion
mpicpp writes with a snippet from Businessweek: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is seeking to raise as much as $21.1 billion in its initial public offering, in what could be the largest sale of new stock in the U.S. ever. The Chinese company and shareholders including Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO:US) plan to sell 320.1 million American depositary shares for $60 to $66 apiece, according to a regulatory filing today (BABA:US). At the high end of that range, the offering would surpass Visa Inc.'s $19.7 billion IPO in March 2008 and give the company a market value of $162.7 billion. Alibaba's executives are now able to meet fund managers to build demand for the IPO and they plan to begin the roadshow in New York next week, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The Hangzhou-based company has garnered years of attention for its scale — with 279 million active buyers in the year through June — and its exposure to a growing Internet consumer base in China.
Gwailo? Now that's a new insult I've never seen before. And it's not a chinese word, in case you were wondering.
The correct Mandarin word for "foreigner" is "laowai", and it is not an insult. It is a polite term. A less polite term would be "wairen", but even that is not really an insult.
And it's not a chinese word, in case you were wondering.
I was actually wondering why you're wasting everyone's time by commenting about a word which you apparently know nothing about.
Unlike the U.S., the dirty little secret people in other countries want to keep quiet about, or are forced to keep quiet about, are the people they call "nigger" in their culture.
Chinese has minorities, but unlike other countries, they are doing something about it. They recently announced a policy of paying people to intermarry. If an ethnic minority person marries someone in the dominant Han ethnicity, they can receive a payment of 10,000 RMB per year for the first five years of their marriage. If they encourage enough mixed marriages, they may be able to eliminate all their minorities in a few generations. They won't have to worry about Tibetan separatism if there are no more Tibetans.
You beat me to it, 'cause I paused to look it up. He was a woodcutter, not the thieves' leader. The wanted to kill him because he knew how to get their treasure.
Not that that version of the story is particularly reasurring for an IPO either...
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I tried to source items from sellers on Alibaba. I really did. Unfortunately, the site looks like a year 1 beta run my morons who don't know what they're doing and have never even heard the term professionalism. Their e-mails are basically scam spam. Every single seller who gave me a quote turned out to be a scammer. Alibaba doesn't give a shit. They do nothing to stop it besides pretending to certify them as gold sellers. If you invest in Alibaba, you might as well put money in Facebook and Apple because apparently you like disastrous Titanic-caliber corporate meltdowns. Investing in companies because they're making money when all their users hate them is so beyond stupid.
People are both right and wrong here. Though despite what the CCP wants you to believe "Chinese" is not a language any more than "Swiss".
Gweilo (white ghost, aka foreign devil) is Cantonese, and though some don't consider it all that offensive, that would be about how an Alabama redneck doesn't consider "hey boy" offensive to a black man.
But it's not Mandarin, so the OP's post of "learn some Mandarin you dirty uneducated gwailo" made about as much sense as "learn some American you barmy wanker" :)
Quick correction - foreigners CAN own Chinese companies. In fact, I own one - a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise (called a "woofy"). You can own a company in China; what you cannot do is sell OR EVEN OFFER stock or options of a foreign company to any Chinese national. Meaning that foreign companies who provide stock options to their employees in the US or other countries cannot do that for their Chinese employees. That's about the only difference, however.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
So you told him to learn Mandarin, because he found a site confusing, and then used a Cantonese insult to drive your 'point' home. Learn French, zakkenwasser.
If one speaks of the modern standard language, the correct-est Mandarin word for 'foreigner' is waiguoren. While laowai is not a strong insult, it is restricted to the colloquial register and it has a slightly pejorative air.
The Internet bubble is already bursting, with mass layoffs all over the valley. On top of that, the "China growth" story is also cold and dead, with bad debts soaring across Asia.
This has the makings of a massive flop, but the news media is ecstatic about this IPO despite widespread reporting on both bubbles having burst already.
Short this piggy.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Then that was actually illegal. The ONLY stock that can be given to Chinese nationals, working in China, is that of a company publicly traded on a Chinese stock exchange. No other stock transaction is actually legal. Now, many do it anyway (hey, TIC - This Is China), but it is illegal.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Except NO one uses "guizi", they use "laowai". SOURCE: living and working in Shanghai and neighboring provinces for most of the last decade. Not to mention what my Shanghainese wife and family say is customary...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
All I see here is a bunch of hate for Alibaba. I do not understand it. Alibaba is basically the chinese/hong kong version of ebay. I buy stuff off their all the time and it's great. But you have to know what it is to get any use out of it. It's mostly grey market and refurbed stuff. Also, if it's shipping from Hong Kong it's going to take about 2 weeks to get to you. If it's mainland china, it can literally take 2 months. It's not just for cheap stuff, there are things you can get on there that just aren't sold in the US.
As a hobby I build a lot of stuff... electronics, tools, whatever... I can get prefabbed circuit boards off there for a few dollars. For example, a few years ago I built my own stereo, and wanted it to have bluetooth. I got a blutooth receiver board and a D/A converter for it for about $15, and that sort of thing just didn't exist in the US at the time.
Every seller I've dealt with on there's been great. I've not gotten ripped off. I've returned things, gotten support, etc... I'm sure there are bad sellers on there, I've not run into one though.
Ali Baba and it's sister consumer site, Ali Express, are aptly named to recall the famous arabian theives. I've bought lots of items on ali express and my experience is that anything above $40 for sale is going to involve you losing your money to a thief. Things like Suunto watches sell there under $100 but guess what, they are either counterfeits or you never get what you order. Same with Seagull brand watches. It's a theives market. Sure Ali baba has dispute resolution mechanism but the theives know how to work this to their advantage. A typical transaction goes like this. You buy something and you get a tracking number. The item never arrives. You check the tracking number and it's a real tracking number and it shows the item arrive but was deliver to some other city. You file a dispute. The thief ("merchant") offers you a $20 discount for your inconvenience and promises to reship it. If you accept this offer then you close the dispute and cannot re-open it. Needless to say the item never arrives. The tracking number is just one the thief recycled from some other past shipment to satisfy the alibaba purchase tracking. If you are clever enough not to accept the $20 offer then what happens is the dispute goes back and forth with the theif saying he's out his product and could you please agree to split the cost. If he's lucky you walk the time for the transaction past the Alibaba protection period. If not you remeber to escalate it. Then theres a month or more of incommunicado with the Ali baba site where they weigh your claims of non-arrival with the theifs attempts to seem conciliatory. Perhaps alibaba refunds your money but you don't know till one day it just happens.
I've been down this road so many times with "almost but not quite too good to be true" that this is the norm not the exceptions. The theives know that you know that somethings are too good to be true. so they price they scam appropriately. For example, often one theif will have a dozen different IDs on alibaba and then will sell the same suunto watch for a spectrum of prices. He's effectively titrating for the chumps wariness level. Exactly how much below MFG retail do your antennas go up verus your own greed to get the best deal. So you fool yourself by picking the seller with the price you are willing to believe. But they are the same guy.
Alibaba closes down the theif sometimes, but a week later they pop up with the exact same scam.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.