China's Alibaba Group Said To Tap NYSE For Big IPO

Alibaba is a mix of Amazon.com, eBay, PayPal and Google, all with some uniquely Chinese characteristics.

• China's largest internet firm is pricing its offering at between $60 and $66 a share. That could lead to a valuation above $160 billion, surpassing the one achieved by Facebook at its flotation two years ago. The firm also looks to raise above $20 billion with this placement, which would make it one of the biggest IPOs in history.

Alibaba Group is planning to list its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, according to several news reports, in what likely would be one of the largest-ever IPOs in the U.S. in the amount raised.

Alibaba is the largest e-commerce provider in China, described as Amazon.com (AMZN), eBay (EBAY), PayPal and Google (GOOG) all wrapped into one.

Alibaba : the biggest IPO of all time

Analysts say an Alibaba IPO could raise about $20 billion and give the company a market valuation of $100 billion to $150 billion. That would surpass the $16 billion Facebook (FB) IPO in May 2012, which was the biggest U.S. tech initial public offering.

The IPO will benefit Yahoo (YHOO), which owns a 24% stake in the company.

Alibaba had planned to list in Hong Kong but ran into problems with that exchange's rules. According to a report from Bloomberg News, Alibaba could still decide to list in Hong Kong, should regulators there approve its plan to give executives control over board nominations. Bloomberg said the Alibaba IPO could come as soon as April.

Jack Ma (left) with the founders of Alibaba in late 1990s

Alibaba was founded in an apartment in 1999 by Jack Ma as a business-to-business e-commerce website. It now consists of nine business units.

Besides Alibaba.com, a global e-commerce platform for small businesses, other sites include Taobao.com, China's top consumer-to-consumer online marketplace and a rough equivalent to eBay. It also runs Tmall.com, a business-to-consumer platform, and Etao.com, a shopping search-engine platform. It has a PayPal-like online payment website called Alipay.com. Its cloud services platform is called Aliyun.com, akin to Amazon Web Services. It's also pushing into social gaming and mobile technology, a field dominated by Tencent, China's top Internet company by revenue.

Yahoo includes Alibaba in its quarterly financials due to its large stake in the firm, though the reporting is one quarter behind. Alibaba revenue in the three months to September rose 51% from the year-earlier period to $1.78 billion on net income of $801 million, Yahoo said. As of Sept. 30, Yahoo estimated its Alibaba stake was worth $8.1 billion.