Alibaba.com gives UK route to China

For years, the glut of cheap imports flowing from the huge manufacturing zones of southern China on to shop shelves across the world has resembled an irreversible tide.

The result? An escalating trade deficit which has come to underline China's role as the West's factory floor.

Now, the largest internet company in China is attempting to help swing the pendulum back in the other direction.

Alibaba.com, the e-commerce firm headed by Jack Ma, the man dubbed China's "internet godfather", is to launch an online platform which will encourage the owners of British small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to export their products to the world's most populous country.

Called Export to China, Export to the World, the new service, which will be launched in the second half of this year, will target the 268,000 Britons who are already members of Alibaba.com.

The website is currently recruiting new members in this country at a rate of 2,000 every week.

David Wei, chief executive of Alibaba.com and a former executive at B&Q in China, said that the new platform would appeal to British SMEs operating in industries in which Britain retained a prominent international role.

"In high-technology engineering products, where the UK is still very competitive, and in areas such as patents and intellectual property, there is a major opportunity for UK SMEs to export to China," said Wei.

Alibaba.com is the Hong Kong-listed unit of Alibaba Group, which also includes one of China's biggest consumer websites and a substantial online auction business.

Wei said the company continued to keep an open mind about stock market listings for other divisions of the group.

"We are keeping all options on the table," said Wei.

Last week, Alibaba.com reported its maiden results as a public company, unveiling a 200 per cent rise in operating profit to RMB804m.

The Chinese company may play a significant role in the ongoing takeover battle between Microsoft and Yahoo!, which owns a 39 per cent stake in Alibaba Group.

Ma is understood to have appointed Deutsche Bank to advise him on the situation and is in talks with potential investors who may be interested in co-funding a buyout of the Yahoo! stake.
On Friday, Ma was one of a number of senior Chinese businessmen who attended a discussion in London with government ministers about the future of the internet.

Internet overtakes TV in Sweden, the UK will be next

2009 should see the UK become the first major economy in which the internet overtakes television as the No. 1 advertising medium, according to a new forecast from GroupM. The new prediction follows GroupM's report released in December, which estimated that the internet would become the top ad medium in Sweden this year and that the UK and Denmark would follow suit.

GroupM now forecasts that the UK will likely pass that mark by the end of 2008 when the internet will account for 24.8% of British ad spending, just behind a projected 26 per cent share for TV.

The forecast assumes internet ad spending in the UK will grow 30.8% during 2007 to US$6.7 billion vs. a one per cent rate of growth for television, which will climb to about $7 billion. The GroupM analysis assumes online ad spending would need to climb six per cent or more during 2009 to overtake the market's television advertising volume.