Alibaba moves into events

They now, of course, have enough money to buy the whole Chinese coal-mining industry (see here if the reference isn't clear to you). So far, however, it seems that our friends at Alibaba are going to stick to their core business and focus on providing B2B media services.

As expected, and frequently denied, the company is already moving into organising events. These may not yet be fully-fledged public trade fairs, but that is surely the logical next step. Thanks to Eddie Choi for pointing me to this link on the Alibaba site regarding a Shenzhen private buyer event for Woolworths next week. It notes "More Big Buyer sourcing events will be announced in the near future".

Mind you, they'll need to get an awful lot of Woolworths buyers into Shenzhen meetings with 220 suppliers to justify a market cap of (as we write) of US$23 billion. Heck, they could probably buy Woolworths, take control of the whole Australian supply chain and still have change to spare.

Surreal

I just looked. The Ali-money machine just hit $37.85. This is getting quite surreal and long ago parted company with any connection to reality. Fundamentals? Shmundamentals. Mental.
Sent via BlackBerry.

$10bn in trades by lunchtime

Midday saw Alibaba volume hit 336.88mn shares. That's suggests well over HK$10bn at the $30 - 32 range in which most of the morning's action has been taking place. That's US$1.3bn in old money.
Sent via BlackBerry.

Alibaba at HK$35!

My colleague Mark is keeping us up-to-date by SMS on this topsy-turvy news:

Aibaba at HK$35!! Market Cap US$23 billion
Sent via BlackBerry.

Buckley heading home

I had completely missed this news but, as it makes a refreshing change to magic carpet puns, I'd like to note it now. We'll update our thoughts on the Ali-IPO later in the day as the trading unfolds.

Warren Buckley has been CEO at Suntec Singapore for the past seven years but will be returning to Canada at the end of the year to resume his previous position as CEO of PavCo (BC Pavilion Corporation), the Crown corporation responsible for the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre (VCEC) and BC Place Stadium. The VCEC is being substantially expanded in advance of the 2010 Winter Olympics and Buckley's marketing nous (Suntec has won several international marketing awards under his leadership) will be welcomed there.

Buckley is quoted as saying: "I've had the chance to travel and work around the world, but there really is no place like home. Vancouver is one of the world's most popular convention and meeting destinations, and the current expansion of the convention centre, which is scheduled to be completed in March, 2009, is certainly capturing the imagination of meeting planners at home and abroad. As a result, this is a great opportunity to come home and help take our local convention and meeting industry to the next level."

As far as I'm aware, there's no official word on Buckley's successor in Singapore. I'm not a gambling man but, if I were, a small flutter on his suave #2, COO Peter Idenburg, probably wouldn't go amiss.

HK$ 'peg' secure from Ali-IPO

Last week we asked whether the Alibaba IPO could break the Hong Kong $:US$ peg. At the time, we didn't think so and today Bloomberg confirms that the Ali-IPO was not the secret "open sesame" code that speculators have been seeking for so long (and with such spectacularly little success). The piece notes:

Investors needed Hong Kong dollars to order shares in the Chinese Internet company's $1.5 billion IPO, the biggest for an Internet company since Google Inc.'s 2004 offer.

And Alibaba was just one of the 33 companies that sought a total sum of HK$69 billion ($8.9 billion) last month from overeager investors. This demand for Hong Kong stock worsened a demand-supply mismatch in the city's currency.

I have to say, even in the grown-up world of big boys' financial markets, that $69 billion sounds like a lot of money to me.

Anyway, it seems that the worst we can now fear is columnists and analysts playing fast with Alibaba jokes for a few more days. So, this Bloomberg piece had the "open sesame" crack. Today's South China Morning Post had the old "and what I want to know is where are the 40 thieves" variation. I suppose we'll have to wait 'til Europe wakes up for some saucy puns about Scheherezade.

New BSG report released

There's a press release over on our Corporate Blog with details of a new report we've just published on Alibaba.com. Having, along with most of the rest of Hong Kong, received a zero allocation, I shall simply be an interested bystander with my fingers in my ears tomorrow morning to prevent hearing loss caused by the loud pop.

Mind you, with the Hang Seng down 4% so far today (-1,244 points to 29,225 at the moment), I wonder how long it will stay up there?

Asia highlighted in new Weitzner role at CMP

Folio magazine reports that Steven Weitzner is stepping down as CEO of CMP Technology in the USA to take on a new role as head of international M&A and business development. It's clearly a bit of a surprise as no replacement has been announced and the parent company's CEO, David Levin, will be taking on an interim chairman role while the search goes on.

What caught our eye was this paragraph:

In his new role for CMP Technology, Weitzner has a large playing field to work with. "As an organization, UBM's got over a quarter of its business in Asia. We've got substantial and fast-growing businesses in India and China," says Levin. "And in old Europe there are opportunities as well, so Steve has an open field to look at."

It's not quite clear how that all fits into the tri-partite CMP family (with CMPi in the UK and CMP Asia based in Hong Kong). We shall watch with interest.

Greens attack advertising too

If you thought I was exaggerating when I wrote yesterday about the impact of climate-change protests on business events, take a look at this piece from FIPP, the magazine publishers' association, on initiatives in Brussels to clamp down on car advertising. It notes:

By adopting the advertising and labelling part of this report, the [European] Parliament supports the idea that car ads should devote a fixed amount of space (20 per cent) to public policy messages.

This report contains six paragraphs on advertising and labelling requirements for car advertising that would infringe on the freedom of commercial communication, as they suggest how the car industry has to inform the consumer about environmental aspects of the advertised car.

It's not hard to see this extending to airline advertising and then to advertising promoting travel to international events. Happily, most of the world does not share Brussels' perverse enthusiasm for regulation and we probably won't be seeing anything like this in Asia for the foreseeable future. But many of the Asia B2B industry's clients are much closer to that unholy alliance of Eurocrats and climate change nutters and may well be affected by it.

Is the events business taking the air travel threat seriously?

One key take-away from both the UFI and ICCA meetings from which I've just returned: the business events industry (exhibitions, conventions, conferences and other meetings) is only waking up to a huge threat very slowly. Reed Exhibitions' Nick Forster mentioned it at UFI and the Pacific Asia Travel Association's Peter de Jong at ICCA: it's not the threat of terror in the skies, miserable major airports or surly security personnel. It's the growing focus on the environmental lobby on air travel as a significant contributor to global warming.

This issue does not seem to have taken hold of the consciousness of anybody in the industry in Asia in a serious way. They are merrily marketing in the assumption that people will continue to get on 'planes in ever larger numbers and keep the business humming along. In the short term, and particularly for local and regional business in Asia (as budget airlines explode relatively late onto the scene here), this may be true. But longer term, I am concerned that most seriously under-estimate the challenge.

PATA's de Jong noted that the mainstream travel industry is fighting a serious rearguard action against knee-jerk legislation on this issue, especially in Europe. But it seems clear that we can expect higher 'carbon' taxes on air travel and, perhaps, demonstrators outside major events like the ones who camped outside Heathrow this summer.

Be aware and beware. The level of environmental awareness in the meetings and events industry is pretty pitiful. That will have to change.