Alibaba shares fall 8% after $10 billion Hong Kong share sale

Aug 24 : Alibaba shares fell 8 per cent in early Hong Kong trade on Monday after the tech company finalised a HK$80 billion ($10.21 billion) share placement at HK$112.70 apiece, in a deal aimed at funding artificial intelligence-related development.The Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing company priced 710 million new shares at an 8.4 per cent discount to the last close of its Hong Kong-listed stock.The deal is the largest-ever primary follow-on offering by a Hong Kong-listed company and the third-largest globally this year after offerings by Alphabet and Intel.Alibaba intends to use proceeds to fund AI development, including the expansion of related infrastructure. The share placement comes a week after Alibaba reported quarterly earnings in which it said it had already spent nearly ha