At China's Alibaba, chairman Ma's dealings raise red flags

Updated, 9:04 p.m. | The Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group filed paperwork on Tuesday in the United States to sell stock to the public for the first time, in an embrace of the global capital markets that represents a coming-of-age for China's 

The local leading the charge was Jack Ma, a school teacher who founded Alibaba at his apartment in Hangzhou, a city near Shanghai, in 1999. The original Alibaba website connected small manufacturers at home with commercial buyers overseas. But Mr 

China isn't big enough for Alibaba. The e-commerce company has ambitions to expand far beyond China, and by filing yesterday for its initial public offering in the U.S., Alibaba has moved closer to that goal. It could raise as much as $20 billion

Everybody loves superlatives, and it is definitely Superlatives Week for the tech press. Alibaba's IPO will represent “surely one of tech's largest ever” Kara Swisher of Re/code intoned. Heather Somerville and Brandon Bailey of 

The acknowledgement, on page 42 of a 300-plus-page filing, highlighted longstanding questions about the Chinese e-commerce giant's complex corporate structure and potential conflicts of interests surrounding Ma, who started Alibaba in his one-room