Firm to launch service for investing in Alibaba IPO

Beijing-based Harvest Fund Management Co plans to roll out a group-buying service that enables average Chinese investors to subscribe to Alibaba's IPO shares, Shanghai Securities News reported Thursday.

An unnamed source familiar with the matter was quoted by the report as saying that investors could apply for the service via Harvest's official website and mobile application next week. Details about the procedure will reportedly be revealed at that time.

Calls to Harvest by the Global Times remained unanswered.

Investors are required to put in at least 1,000 yuan ($160), according to the source, which is much lower than the investment threshold of 10,000 yuan set by the company for its three current wealth management services.

Harvest reportedly got approval from the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange in April, making it possible that its individual clients will not be restricted by China's $50,000-a-year limit on moving capital out when directly investing in property and securities abroad.

The money would be collected and managed by Harvest's subsidiary Harvest Wealth Management Co, targeting new shares that are set to be sold by the country's e-commerce giant on the New York Stock Exchange, according to media reports.

Analysts said that this service would finally give regular Chinese investors the chance to get a share of the dividends that would be generated by Chinese Internet stocks.

Domestic Internet companies usually get listed on overseas capital markets, which analysts explained is because the threshold of an IPO in the US is lower than in China's A-share markets.

Video and music file-sharing company Xunlei floated on the NASDAQ in June with its shares opening at $14.21 a share, or 18 percent higher than its offering price. Shares of Sina's Weibo, a domestic Twitter-like microblogging network, closed at $20.24 on its debut in April, up 19.06 percent from its offering price.

Alibaba announced in March its plan for a US IPO, which is likely to be the biggest technology debut in history. The company's debut is expected to stand at $20 billion after the IPO, dwarfing Facebook Inc's $15 billion IPO in 2012. In late June, it said that it had picked the New York Stock Exchange for its IPO, which will reportedly kick off on August 8.