Alibaba Group held the largest initial public offering in history when it listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014.
The Chinese e-commerce group priced its offering at $68 per American depositary share and raised about $21.8 billion. Underwriters later exercised an over-allotment option, bringing the total proceeds to roughly $25 billion. The listing gave international investors direct access to one of China’s biggest internet businesses.
The offering is sometimes described simply as a $25 billion IPO, although the initial base deal and the final expanded amount were different. Alibaba’s businesses included the Taobao and Tmall marketplaces, but the group also operated logistics, cloud-computing, and digital-media businesses.