Markets
22/11/2017

Online Platform Taobao Sells Two Boeing 747s Finally After Six Unsuccessful Offline Attempts v




Online Platform Taobao Sells Two Boeing 747s Finally After Six Unsuccessful Offline Attempts v
Auctioneers managed to sell off two of its Boeing 747 freighters on Taobao following multiple attempts by the plane maker to do so offline had failed.  
 
According to information available from the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, more than 320 million yuan (around 48 million U.S. dollars) was paid for purchasing of the two aircraft by SF Airlines. The winders of the bid were pitted against 25 other bidders.
 
Three Boeing 747 planes were put up for auctioning on Monday. The court said that because there had been only one bidder who had registered for the bidding, one of the auctions had to be cancelled. Since 2013, the planes had been stored in storage in the cities of Shanghai and Shenzhen.
 
The court also said that aircraft becoming the subject of a Taobao judicial auction has happened for the first time in its history. There were 26 bid rounds after which the deals were finalized.
 
The first Chinese cargo carrier that had bene formed with foreign investment - Jade Cargo International, was the pervious owners of the freight planes. The company closed down in 2013.
 
There had been six unsuccessful bids and attempts for selling off the three aircraft earlier since October 2015 due to lac o f buyers.
 
"Online auctions are a good way to handle the property of bankrupt firms," said Long Guangwei, the court's vice president.
 
"Online auctions save time and service fees for bidders," he said.
 
The Taobao's judicial sales platform was launched in 2012 and most of the Chinese courts are now registered on that judicial sales platform since 2012. Similar to eBay, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba id the owners of Taobao.
 
Amounting to a total combined value of 460 billion yuan (about 69.6 billion U.S. dollars), the online auction platform has till date been the place for the auction of more than 330,000 objects.
 
"Online auctions help transparency in legal affairs because all information is there for all to see," said Lu Weixing, general manager of Alibaba's auction business.
 
Lu said that the online auction platform has also been used by the customs authorities, the police and the financial, tax and land resources authorities for auctioneering. With values reaching several billions, the online auction platform has also been the place were steel production capacity quotas, land use and several online auctions of company shares have been previously done.
 
Online auctioning platforms have earlier also been witness to somewhat unusual items where millions were spent on buying them. eBay had recorded the highest amount paid on its website for the sale of an item amounting to $85 million in deposits for a superyacht in 2006 which beat the previous record of $4.9 million for a Gulfstrem II charter jet.
 
(Source:mews.xinhuanet.com & www.bbc.com)

Christopher J. Mitchell
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