The Firm has represented Alibaba Group Holding Limited (“Alibaba Group”) in connection with its initial public offering, the largest IPO ever conducted. The offering, which was comprised of 368,122,000 American depositary shares (“ADSs”), each representing one ordinary share of Alibaba Group, was listed on the New York Stock Exchange and raised a total of US$25 billion in gross proceeds. Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. International plc and Citigroup Global Markets Inc. acted as joint book runners for the offering.
Alibaba Group is the largest online and mobile commerce company in the world in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2013, which was US$296 billion. Alibaba Group’s ADSs are listed under the trading symbol of “BABA.”
The Simpson Thacher team was led by Leiming Chen, Daniel Fertig and Bill Hinman, and included David Lee, Tianyi Chen and Bruce Sun (Corporate – Hong Kong); Kelli Schultz and Frederick De Albuquerque (Corporate – Palo Alto); Tristan Brown and Linda Barrett (ECEB – Palo Alto); Judy Yan (Tax – Palo Alto); Steve DeLott (Insurance – New York); and Lori Lesser (IP – New York).