Credit Suisse Bank Impact On Alibaba IPO

The IPO of Alibaba Group is poised to be lead by Credit Suisse Bank. Alibaba’s public offering is expected to occur before the end of 2013. The past weeks for Alibaba have spurred meetings with investment banks though no official announcement from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. has been made to IPO. Expected valuation of Alibaba would be at $60-$100 billion, and could raise $15 billion.

The $8 billion loan that was made has also drawn significant attention for the IPO by Alibaba from investment banks Australian and New Zealand Banking Group, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, JPMorgan, Mizuho Corporate Bank, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, DBS Bank, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs recently offering $500 million in financing.

Investment bank and executives from firms such as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse have been involved in meetings causing even more speculation of the IPO with investors. Last year, Credit Suisse Bank was the lead investment banking adviser to Alibaba when it bought back $7.1 billion worth of its stock from Yahoo Inc leaving Yahoo with a 24 percent investment in the company.

Billionaire founder and Chairman Jack Ma stated to Wall Street Journal, “ The company was ready for an IPO.” The challenges with regulation concerns arose in which he recently stated in an interview “China’s financial regulators have been “excessive” and called for greater openness in an industry he said does not serve the majority of Chinese.” “China’s financial industry, especially the banking industry, only serves 20% of clients, and I see there are 80% of the clients are not covered (by their services).” he also in the interview.

Credit Suisse has a history of holding important roles with Alibaba, from financing a $2.5 billion deal to take private the Alibaba.com business-to-business unit to purchasing its Yahoo Inc. stock buyback. Jack Ma spoke last year at the Credit Suisse's Asian investment conference on behalf of Alibaba. It is still questionable with Alibaba’s IPO and how Asia’s financial regulations and regulators will respond to Alibaba’s most recent indications IPO moves.