New York: Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's initial public offering (IPO) is now the world's biggest ever at $25 billion, after bankers exercised an option to boost the deal size by 15 per cent on strong demand.
Overwhelming demand saw the IPO initially raise $21.8 billion and then send Alibaba's stock surging 38 per cent in its debut on Friday. This led to underwriters exercising an option to sell an additional 48 million American depositary shares, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the information is private.
Credit Suisse Group AG, Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase and Co., Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. managed the offering.
The IPO surpassed the previous global record set by Agricultural Bank of China Ltd in 2010 when the bank raised $22.1 billion.
Under the option, Alibaba agreed to sell 26.1 million additional shares and Yahoo Inc 18.3 million, netting the two companies an extra $1.8 billion and $1.2 billion respectively.
Alibaba's Jack Ma agreed to sell an extra 12.7 million shares and company co-founder Joe Tsai agreed to sell 902,782 additional shares, according to the prospectus.
