As a prelude to possible listing in Hong Kong, Alibaba has appointed Maggie Wu as the chief financial officer for its B2B business.

Maggie Wu will take the position at Alibaba at the end of this month. Before joining Alibaba, she was a partner of KPMG. She joined KPMG in 1992 and was later promoted to partner for the audit business of KPMG in 2003. She has participated in the IPO audits of China Telecom and China Merchants Bank and provided auditing and consulting service to a few large size enterprises like Motorola, Siemens and Sinopec.

In early May, the Chinese media reported that Alibaba would have its B2B service, which is the main income source of Alibaba, listed in Hong Kong in the third quarter of this year to raise about US$1 billion.