Alibaba praises Hong Kong at start of retail campaign for $13 billion listing

Alibaba Group Chairman Daniel Zhang said Hong Kong’s “future is bright” as the e-commerce giant kicked off the retail campaign for its secondary listing in the city gripped by increasingly violent protests and recession.

In a first for the Asian financial hub, Alibaba said the listing would be fully automated and paperless to reflect its environmental standards, confirming an earlier Reuters story.

Investment bankers familiar with the listing however said the move avoided a potential publicity nightmare of investors queuing at banks to place stock orders while protests raged around them.

Four thousand people have been arrested in Hong Kong since June and the territory’s economy has sunk into recession for the first time in a decade as the anti-government demonstrations disrupt business and deter tourists.