Report: Alibaba Officially Files for Hong Kong IPO in October [UPDATE: Nope]

UPDATE: Alibaba has issued a statement saying that this report is inaccurate, and stating that the company has not picked banks, a timetable, or a location for its IPO yet.

China is the world’s biggest e-commerce market, and the company that dominates it is about to go public. According to a report in the Oriental Daily, a Hong Kong newspaper, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has already submitted its application paperwork to the Hong Kong stock exchange and is aiming for a listing this October. Its valuation reportedly tops out at $100 billion — no, I didn’t mistype that — and is apparently looking to raise around $20 billion, from which it plans to use $7 billion or so to buy back shares from Yahoo.

This is all according to the Oriental Daily report, of course. The company has not officially announced any of this yet; we’ve contacted Alibaba for comment and will update this story if we hear back.

If true, this news would mean that Alibaba has officially decided to forgo a US listing and instead have its initial public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange. That’s the direction rumors have been suggesting the company will go for a few weeks now, so it’s not a huge surprise, but with the pen apparently put to paper it looks like that decision is final, so the US exchanges will miss out on what might well be the biggest e-commerce listing ever.

And then there’s that valuation. $100 billion. Is Alibaba really worth that much? It’s debatable, but the company is raking in bundles of cash, and with less than 600 million Chinese even online, the market it dominates could literally double in size over the next 5 to 10 years.

(Oriental Daily via TechWeb)