Jack Ma, founder and CEO of Alibaba, has for the first time confirmed to Alibaba employees at the company's annual meeting that Alibaba's B2B business will initiate its IPO procedure in Hong Kong.

Ma said that Alibaba has already submitted an application to Hong Kong Joint Stock Exchange Market. For a long time there had been a rumor about Alibaba's IPO plans, but all this had not been formally confirmed by Alibaba until July when Alibaba appointed consultants for its listing and hired Maggie Wu, a partner at KPMG, as senior vice president and chief financial officer of the B2B company.

Alibaba reportedly will raise about HK$7.8 billion through this IPO, and use the money for its global expansion and B2B platform improvements.