''In a 15-minute closed-door meeting Tuesday, Messrs. Ma and Cameron—joined by Alibaba Group Chief Executive Jonathan Lu and British Ambassador to China Sebastian Wood—discussed ways to raise the profile of British brands on Alibaba’s popular e-commerce sites as well as strategies for increasing bilateral trade, according to a post on Alibaba’s official blog.
The two also presided over the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Alibaba and the U.K. Trade & Investment department to promote the sale of British goods on Alibaba’s Tmall.com, an e-commerce site that allows brands to open storefronts and sell directly to Chinese consumers.
Alibaba opened a London office in 2009 and one of its sites, which puts manufacturers in touch with buyers, has more than 2 million U.K. members, according to the Alibaba blog.
Alibaba’s growing interest in overseas markets comes at a time when the company is talking to the NYSE Exchange and the Nasdaq Market about a possible IPO, after talks with Hong Kong’s stock exchange recently broke down. Although Alibaba hasn’t made a final decision on a listing venue, its market debut could be the largest Internet IPO since Facebook Inc.’s $16 billion listing last year.
So far, most of Alibaba’s operations are in China, where its Taobao and Tmall online marketplaces with hundreds of millions of users dominate the country’s fast-growing e-commerce market. But over the past several months, the company has made a few notable steps into the U.S. market. Alibaba recently invested in a few U.S. companies, includingShopRunner Inc. , a competitor to Amazon.com Inc Inc.,Quixey Inc , a search engine that allows users to find apps by searching for what they want to do.
Still the real gem of the event must have been the photo. On Twitter after the meeting, Mr. Cameron said on his official account: “Jack Ma took a #selfie of us together, which I promised to share!”
Though it seems like it was Mr. Ma’s idea, Mr. Cameron is not on virgin political territory''.
From; WSJ
