...and what will they spend it on?

Today's South China Morning Post reports (behind its irritating firewall, sorry) that the institutional portion of Alibaba's IPO is over-subscribed by 50 times. Surprise, surprise. There's nothing else much new in the story which doesn't repeat the suggestion in the weekend FT that the pricing is "relatively undemanding"....for Martians perhaps.

The SCMP does say that "Alibaba.com says it will use HK$1.57 billion of the offering's proceeds for strategic acquisitions and business development". This, of course, pours fuel on the already raging fire of speculation of who they will buy. The gossip in the exhibitions industry is that Kenfair is considered the most likely candidate despite Alibaba's protestations that it is not interested in running exhibitions. I actually have my doubts and suspect that, if they do any acquisitions, they may surprise us.