Alibaba prepares for global expansion

As part of its drive for geographical diversification, Alibaba is moving its European headquarters from Geneva to London this month, as it sees the UK as one of the most promising markets for picking up suppliers.

Alibaba Group, which also includes Taobao, China’s leading consumer e-commerce website, and Yahoo China, plans to increase its current workforce of 12,000 by more than 4,000 this year. Alibaba.com, the Hong Kong-listed flagship which operates the business-to-business trading platform, reported revenues of Rmb2.2bn ($321m) for the first nine months of 2008.

Although Alibaba serves buyers and sellers all over the world, Chinese companies seeking buyers overseas account for the bulk of its revenues so far. But as demand from the US and Europe has dropped off, the company has launched programmes to support domestic trade and exports from other countries to China.

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