A Chinese retailer nicknamed “the Asian Amazon.com” plans a $5 billion initial
A Chinese retailer nicknamed “the Asian Amazon.com” plans a $5 billion initial public offering in the U.S. — while American firms like Facebook and Groupon have delayed or dropped plans to go public.
It’s easier, for a number of reasons, for a tech firm to go public in China than in the U.S. these days.
360Buy.com, owned by Beijing Jingdong Century Trading Co., sells cameras, cell phones, computers and the like to the billion-strong Chinese market. And just as in the go-go 1990s, big investors are salivating at its potential market value: The Walton family (think Wal-Mart) recently invested in the site.
“It will be the biggest tech IPO ever”, Tim Keating, former managing director of investment bank Bear Stearns International and now CEO of Denver-area investment fund Keating Capital told FoxNews.com.
Meanwhile, leading U.S. tech firms are struggling with their IPO plans.
* Facebook has pushed off its IPO plans to at least late next year, despite recent private valuations that peg the company at more than $60 billion.
* The popular daily deals site Groupon delayed its IPO as accounting irregularities led to a plunge in revenues.
* Zynga, the maker of popular games like Farmville, recently delayed its hotly anticipated IPO due to “market turbulence.”
And though 360Buy.com is valued at $10 billion — the company is only putting half of its valuation up for sale — it’s far from China’s largest online retailer.
“Consider that the market leader, Taobao Mall, had 370 million registered users in 2010,” Tom McHale, a former technology journalist in Beijing, told FoxNews.com. “Jingdong today claims 15 million users, and that makes Jingdong difficult to find on any list of Internet business leaders in China.”
But that hasn’t stopped the company, which has been in meetings with leading Wall Street firms in Beijing this month with dollar signs in their eyes: Google raised $1.9 billion with its IPO, after all.