Internet giant Alibaba files IPO
China's Alibaba will soon sell shares in what could be the biggest tech IPO ever. CNN's Jim Boulden reports.

Imagine for a moment, if amazon, ebay and paypal all started trading shares on the same day, well, the Chinese equivalent, is closer to doing just that.

Alibaba is not only China’s biggest online marketplace, it’s also the biggest in the world. Its upcoming initial public offering is going to be one of the biggest tech IPOs ever.
Jack Ma is a former English teacher started in his apartment, and right now it’s got the transaction volume of about 2 amazon.coms, so if you think about it, it’s huge. And it controls about 80% of online business in China.
Here are some other numbers. In the 4th quarter of 2013, alibaba’s revenue soared 66% compared to Q4 2012 to $3 billion, $1.4 billion of that was profits, and it’s estimated more than half of the parcels delivered in china are done by alibaba’s various companies. And the wall street journal estimates alibaba’s various arms ship in volume more than amazon an ebay combined. Add to that, its online payment arm alipay is estimated to handle half of all of china’s online payments. Well, alibaba may not be well-known in the west, its connection to Yahoo is legendary. The US internet firm owns a 24% stake in alibaba, that stake has been one of the few bright spot for Yahoo, and its fifth CEO in 5 years, Marissa Myer, until this year, the only way to grab a slice of Alibaba’s success was to buy shares in Yahoo and Yahoo is now in for a huge payday.
Yahoo’s windfall probably you know, could be somewhere between 10 billion and 20 billion dollars depending on how that comes to the market place. What are they gonna do with that money, are they gonna invest it, can you get a piece of alibaba, if you’re only Yahoo, you might be able to get a piece of alibaba, if they decide to return some of the capital to the shareholders.
And what could alibaba do with all that cash and all those shares?
Acquisitions in the west as it looks to get even bigger.
Jim Bolden CNN, London.