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How Alibaba measures up

China's big e-commerce site dominates its American peers

ALIBABA'S shares were priced at $68 on September 18th, giving China's e-commerce behemoth a market capitalisation of $168 billion as it started trading on New York's Stock Exchange. The flotation will raise $21.8 billion, narrowly missing the record for the world’s biggest stock offering, held by Agricultural Bank of China with its $22.1 billion listing in 2010. But if some of the remaining options are exercised by their owners, Alibaba’s could yet be the largest.

Outside of the stockmarket, Alibaba's dominance is less ambiguous. Transactions last year over its websites totalled nearly $250 billion, compared with $116 billion for Amazon, the American "e-taling" giant. Data from this year suggest that with every second that passes, Alibaba handles almost 500 orders, altogether worth more than $9,000 on average. Amazon’s equivalent transaction value in 2013 would be less than $3,700 per second. An average buyer on Alibaba's websites spends over $1,000 a year, whereas the figure is less than half that at Amazon.

Even the firm's name augurs well for its financial success. In the Middle Eastern folk tale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", the protagonist escapes danger and keeps his treasure. So too does the Chinese company of the same name 15 years after it was founded.