Alibaba looks for record-breaking IPO

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba will probably price its US initial public offering at or above the high end of the range next week while exercising an option to sell more shares.

The sale, which is being marketed at a price between US$60 and US$66 per American Depositary share, was warmly welcomed by US investors after the Hangzhou-based company began pitching to investors about its consumer-internet play this week and before marketing efforts to Asian and European investors next Monday.

The hotly anticipated offering has drawn extremely strong demand from US-based investors given its dominant position in the mainland's online retail market and its growth story focusing on small business owners, individual retailers and shoppers, said people familiar with the company.

"The deal attracted a list of big money managers in New York and Boston from day one, shortly after it launched the US roadshow on Monday," said one of them, who declined to be named. "The order book was multiple times oversubscribed, giving the company an option to increase the original price range."

Reuters reported that Alibaba founder Jack Ma Yun gave an impressive performance in Boston, the unofficial headquarters of the US mutual fund industry.

"He's executed well," said Will Danoff, who runs the US$111 billion Contrafund for Fidelity Investments. "There's a lot of big numbers in there," he added after the event. Contrafund holds significant stakes in search giant Google and social media's Facebook.

Bankers said it was premature to tell how many times the final order book will be covered before Alibaba meets potential investors in Hong Kong, Singapore and London, or even sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East.