Alibaba pounces on Intime retail
Alibaba, the Chinese ecommerce group, made an offer of HK $ 19.8 bn (£2.13bn $2.6bn) to take over a leading domestic departmental store NS Hong Kong-listed Intime Retail and redraw China’s $4.5tn retail industry.
Alibaba aims to dismantle the division between online shopping and physical stores, using the big data collected from shoppers’ browsing and buying to improve shop layout and make it easier for shoppers to order online on their smartphones and then pick up the goods in store.
Alibaba Investment, a subsidiary of the New York-listed group, said it will team up with Intime’s founder Shen Guojun, to buy and cancel the shares it does not already own by way of a scheme of arrangement.
Alibaba already owns 27.8 per cent of the issued share capital of Intime, while Shen holds 9.2 per cent and under the proposed offer Alibaba would become Intime’s controlling share holder with a stake of 74 per cent..
Intime operates 29 department stores and 17 shopping malls, mainly in the first and second-tier cities in China.
Alibaba’s vision is to transform traditional retail by leveraging its “substantial consumer penetration” and access to data and technology.
A self made Chinese billionaire ranked 97th in Chinese rich list, Shen Guojun according to Forbes magazine is worth US 2.4bn a post graduate from Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, who also owns stakes in Yintai Resources, a mining company, Metro Land, a retail estate business.