2003: Starting with Foreign Trade

Chapter 463 Sun Tongyu on the First Day of Ahri's Launch
P.S.: Monthly tickets are doubled! Don't waste them! I wonder if I'll have a chance to reach 2000 monthly tickets this month!
"Congratulations to Mr. Sun on achieving financial freedom and taking another step closer to a new chapter in his life."

Late at night, Sun Tongyu stared at the flashing messages on his phone and smiled knowingly.

Since August, he and Tan Jincheng have been like online lovers, chatting with each other via text message and QQ every day. Tan Jincheng even gave him an account on their internal management software called Dingding for chatting.

I must say, their internal management software is quite well-designed, with everything from collaboration and workbench address books to other features. Unfortunately, he didn't have the necessary permissions to view the specific work content.

However, it can still be used as a chat software. He and Tan Jincheng mainly discussed more private topics using DingDing or text messages, which was Tan Jincheng's suggestion.

The reason is quite bizarre; he's afraid Pony Ma will look through his chat history. Would a CEO of a respectable company do something so strange? Besides, can you even see those chat history?
Speaking of this, Sun Tongyu was both amused and exasperated. After exchanging contact information and discussing business operations and internet trends, the two didn't have much to talk about after that.

Besides, they were both busy. Although he had suspended his work at Taobao, it didn't mean he had nothing to do. Tan Jincheng was even more so. Originally, Sun Tongyu thought that this stage of communication would end here.

Who would have thought that a representative of post-80s entrepreneurs, a CEO with a net worth of billions, would send him erotic pictures and pirated movie resources on QQ every day to arouse his desire to chat!
Damn, he really understands men. And you know what? The quality of what he shares is pretty high. It wouldn't be right to ignore him after seeing so much.

After the National Day holiday, the hottest topic in the domestic internet public opinion market is undoubtedly the listing of Ali. In terms of hype and influence, Tan Jincheng is still a junior compared to Lao Matou.

Flash Group chose to slow down its marketing pace in the fourth quarter, not only because of its own strategic needs, but also because it took this into consideration. After the quiet period following its IPO, few companies could withstand the promotional offensive of Ali.

Instead of competing with Ali for resources and traffic online at this time, it would be better to slow down and make some money from him. Kaixin.com is now a well-known website in China, and Ali has placed a lot of ads on it. Orange Technology, which was fooled by the money, also made a lot of money from advertising.

Another hot topic, created by LSPs, is the recently released film "The Ring," which was shown in a censored version in China. This has led to a frenzy of requests for torrents, propelling the film to unprecedented heights.

To Sun Tongyu's dismay, Tan Jincheng sent him the uncut version immediately, leaving him both amused and exasperated.
It's really hard to refuse such an enthusiastic young man. Sun Tongyu knew that Tan Jincheng wanted to recruit him to join Orange Technology to be in charge of the Orange Products Club project, which is why he had been contacting him privately.

In fact, news of his departure has been circulating in the industry for the past few months, and there have been quite a few people who want to recruit him. Tan Jincheng was the first, but not the last. Sun Tongyu has recently received many such offers.

Like Tan Jincheng, Sun Tongyu refused all offers of admission as the company was about to go public. In fact, he hadn't decided where to go yet. From the bottom of his heart, he wanted to take some time to reflect and further his studies, as his knowledge was still too narrow.

Sun Tongyu had seen many tactics used to lure him and other related personnel, including high salaries, stock options, and promises of future success. He had even used them himself. But this was the first time he had ever seen someone send short videos to recruit talent.

No one would believe it if I told them, but this is absolutely outrageous, like the mother of all people opening a door for someone else. It's just outrageous to the extreme.

Lately, this guy has been harassing me with messages, asking how I am and sending me local specialties when he goes out. My wife thinks he's cheating on me, and she's both annoyed and touched by his antics.

The CEO of a company with a net worth of over a billion yuan, whose social status is higher than his own, who has lost real power at Taobao, still thought of sending him some local specialties when he was away on a business trip. To be honest, he was really touched.

This tactic is neither new nor difficult to see through. It's simply a matter of superiors showing some humanistic care to those of lower status than themselves. Old Ma or other business leaders often do this, but when applied to a young person in his twenties like Tan Jincheng, the effect is more significant than for others.

There's no other reason than youth means vigor and high spirits. In the prime of his life, he has easily attracted a lot of talent from both the physical and internet sectors, and many people want to join him.

He could have treated himself in the conventional way, but he used these strange tricks while recruiting people in the conventional way, which shows that Boss Tan really put his heart into it.

He even came up with such a bizarre idea as posting short videos; he's truly a genius, and probably only a young person like him would think of that.

Today is the listing day of Ali. Sun Tongyu appeared in Hong Kong with Lao Ma, other Ali founders and investors, but he did not participate in the bell-ringing ceremony as he has distanced himself from the core of power.

Ali, which officially listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange today, achieved three "firsts" on its listing day: a market value of over US$200 billion, making it the number one internet stock in China; and raising US$15 billion, setting a record for the largest internet financing in China.

The stock closed at HK$39.50, a 102% surge from its issue price, marking the largest first-day gain for a new Hong Kong IPO this year. Both Lao Ma Tou and Ali have a history of creating sensational headlines, and this listing was no exception. Ali's public offering ran from October 22nd to 26th, freezing a staggering HK$450 billion in funds in just five days, representing an oversubscription of over 258 times and setting a new record for the highest amount of frozen funds in the Hong Kong stock market.

In the international placement, Ali received HK$1.4 trillion in subscriptions, with more than 1000 institutional investors participating, representing an oversubscription of 186 times. The total subscription amount from institutional subscriptions and public offerings was nearly HK$2 trillion.

All of this demonstrates that Ali is highly sought after by the capital market. On the day of its listing, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange was unusually busy. In the first 15 minutes of trading in the morning, due to the high volume of buying and selling, the trading systems of many online banks, securities firms, and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange experienced slowdowns due to user congestion.

The high trading activity caused a partial outage at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which was unprecedented. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange subsequently announced that it would invest HK$4.5 million to upgrade the trading system.

To outsiders, this was seen as the biggest praise for Ali and Old Ma, but Sun Tongyu knew that the reality was not so exaggerated. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange had been operating for so many years and had experienced all kinds of situations.

The reason for doing this is simply to learn from the marketing tactics used when Kaixin001 crashed last year. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange is willing to cooperate with Ali in this marketing campaign because there are benefits to be gained.

This atmosphere is created simply to demonstrate the popularity of Ahri and to signal to the outside world that a new king has ascended the throne.

Institutional investors flocked to it, making it the top-valued internet stock in China. The triumphant old man, Ma, was eager to announce that he was the new king. It should be noted that this IPO only involved Alibaba's B2B business.

At the end of last year, Alibaba restructured its business into five parts: Alibaba.com (B2B), Taobao, Alipay, Ali Software, and Yahoo! China.

Old Ma, a martial arts enthusiast, calls it the "Five Fingers of Bodhidharma," and the business being listed this time is one of those fingers: the B2B business. This single B2B business has made Ali the most valuable internet stock in China, even surpassing Taobao, currently the most valuable platform, which hasn't even gone public yet!
On its first day of listing, Ali's market value was approximately HK$2000 billion, which also made Ali's employees millionaires and multi-millionaires. About 1000 employees became millionaires and 300 employees became multi-millionaires.

These two figures also broke the record for the number of millionaires created by domestic internet companies going public.

How to describe the market on the day of Ali's IPO? Ali, with a market value of approximately 260 billion US dollars, is equivalent to the combined market value of Baidu, the search engine leader, and Tencent, the social media leader. That's how amazing it is, and that's how unexpected it is.

Today belongs to Alibaba, to Jack Ma, and to all Alibaba employees, but not to Sun Tongyu. As the current number three figure and the nominal head of Taobao, he did not appear at the bell-ringing ceremony.

The reasons given to the public were that he was unwell upon arriving in Hong Kong, that the B2B business and Taobao were not under the same subsidiary, and that he was leaving the opportunity to investors. But no matter how he explained it, it was all weak and unconvincing.

Although he has not officially resigned, his successor has already been decided. It is Zhang Yong, the current CFO whom Lao Ma poached from Shengda. It has been confirmed that Zhang Yong will take over his position.

The tea is cold before the person leaves.

Based on Taobao's performance this year, Sun Hongbin, who earned nearly 2000 billion yuan for Jack Ma this year, has been ruthlessly kicked out of the game. He must be feeling quite disappointed after experiencing the coldness of human relationships.

"Mr. Tan, you're too kind. You know my situation perfectly well."

"How about it? Looking at the hundreds of millions of stock assets in your account now, besides the cold, hard numbers, don't you feel particularly disappointed?"

Imagine having 40 billion yuan in cash in your account during the most confusing time of your life. Isn't that a bit of a joke? Tan Jincheng isn't entirely sure how many shares Sun Tongyu actually owns in Ali, but his net worth is definitely in the hundreds of millions.

Tan Jincheng replied to the message almost instantly, and after sending it, he didn't forget to say to Gu Qingqing beside him, "Hey, this old man finally responded to my feelings about him directly, things are looking promising."

"Are you crazy? Texting him in the middle of the night, let's not even talk about him; hey, do you think Chaowei really went to jail? It looks like he did to me?"

"He's in, he must be in. That old bastard got off easy." Tan Jincheng replied absentmindedly.

(End of this chapter)