Alibaba Group Holding, an E-Commerce firm, and the founder of Intime have joined together to bid on Intime, a Chinese department store. Alibaba, along with Shen Guo Jun, offered HK$10 per share. It announced recently that both partners will obtain Intime for HK$19.79 billion ($2.55 billion).
Intime currently runs seventeen shopping malls and 29 department stores in China. Since E-Commerce upgraded competition, Intime reported a drop in sales by 21.3 percent. Alibaba presently has 27.82 percent of Intime and Shen has 9.17 percent.
China’s retail division has an estimated worth $4.5 trillion with an expected growth of 10.7 percent. Alibaba believes they can turn around the retail industry and bring a better shopping experience to consumers. In response to this new venture Alibaba chief executive officer Daniel Zhang says that “Those who cling on to the old ways of retailing will be disrupted.”
Alibaba’s Executive Chairman, Jack Ma, recently met with President-elect Donald Trump. Ma explained to the President-elect that the E-Commerce firm plans to bring at least one million small U.S. business to sell in China within the new five years. Back in 2014, however, bought an initial share of Intime for $692.25 million.
