Alibaba (Pending:BABA) is the behemoth of the Chinese retail Internet market. It operates online retailer Taobao, third-party retail site Tmall and group buy site Juhuasuan. In 2013, these three sites generated gross market value sales of $248 billion, or 82.7% of total revenues. The bulk of the other revenue came from Alibaba.com, a global wholesale B2B marketplace, 1688.com, a Chinese wholesale site, and AliExpress, a global consumer marketplace. One of the popular factoids about Alibaba is that it is larger than Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) combined and more profitable, with earnings of $2.85 billion in 2013.

What makes Alibaba a compelling company isn’t only these retail holdings though, it is the profits it receives from its former Alipay subsidiary, the PayPal of China. It also highlights the greatest risk for investors in Alibaba: the “variable interest entity” and Jack Ma’s history of management…To continue reading, please Click Here.

*Please note, this article was written and published as a contribution for Seeking Alpha. To finish reading the article you will be redirected to their site.