Alibaba!

The financial media is atwitter (in what is either a poor or ironic word choice, depending on your point of view, given the share price tumble of one microblogging platform yesterday) about today’s big news out of the technology sector – the Alibab IPO filing.

The Chinese company that is responsible for the bulk of online commerce in a nation with over a billion people submitted plans today to offer shares to the public in a deal that could be worth upwards of $200 billion after shunning the Middle Kingdom in favor of Wall Street where there is renewed hope for stumbling technology stocks.

Yahoo! will be the prime U.S. beneficiary of the IPO as their 2005 investment in the company required them to sell a portion of their holdings if/when Alibaba went public and the company’s founders will maintain almost complete control, Jack Ma providing this interesting letter to employees that was translated in this item at the Wall Street Journal.