Alibaba president says group will expand local business in Europe

By Silvia Aloisi

PARIS (Reuters) -Alibaba will focus on building local businesses outside China, with Europe being the top priority, the group’s president said on Thursday.

“What we will focus more for the future is to build local businesses, so you will see something called TMall which we have in China become TMall in Europe, which means we will serve local brands and local customers in local markets,” J. Michael Evans told a technology conference in Paris.

“We have started with a pilot project in Spain which we will expand across Europe,” he said.

He added that Jack Ma remained the biggest shareholder of Alibaba (NYSE:) and that Ma still cares about the company.