Alibaba Group on Wednesday launched its Hong Kong listing and expects to raise a sum of $13.4 billion from the sale of shares. This comes at a time when the global financial hub faces civil unrest as the Chinese e-commerce giant aims to raise funds to finance its expansion plans. 

The sale of shares for institutional investors started during the New York trading session on Wednesday. 

The company has drafted a 661 pages long prospectus which elaborates on its plans to develop its online delivery and Ele.me, its local services platform. Moreover, it will also invest the money raised in an online travel group named Fliggy. 

Funds will also be put into improving the company's online video platform Youku. 

The Hong Kong city has faced its first recession in 10 years as a result of street protests for over 5 months along with trade tensions between the two largest economies in the world. Alibaba Hong Kong listing could be the city's highest in over 9 years. 

Sources informed reporters that, the Chinese company is observing and noting the progress of the protests in the City as it believes it is a risk to its plans. 

Two sources with knowledge of the matter told that the pricing of the share would be out on or around November 20 while the maximum price of the retail company would be announced in the next week. 

Sources denied being recognised in public as the information has not been officially announced yet. 

According to the prospectus, the company may also put its funds into machine learning and cloud computing. 

According to a study by Gartner, Alibaba Cloud ranks third in the list of Infrastructure as a Service by its US revenue in 2018.

The total assets of the company amount to 1.01 trillion renminbi and revenue for the year ended June 30, 2019 was 410.8 billion renminbi, Alibaba said.