Dangdang was China's Amazon — it IPO'd on the NYSE, then went private at half the price

Dangdang was founded in 1999 by Peggy Yu and Li Guoqing as China's first major online bookstore — the country's answer to Amazon. The company listed on the New York Stock Exchange in November 2010, in an IPO estimated at approximately $1 billion. It was one of the first Chinese internet companies to list in the United States.

The listing coincided with the intensification of China's e-commerce price wars. In December 2010, the month after the IPO, Dangdang entered a direct price war with Amazon.cn and JD.com, particularly in books — its core category. The company that had gone public as China's Amazon was now competing against the actual Amazon, in its own market, on price.

By July 2015, the founders proposed a management buyout at $7.81 per ADS — described as less than half of its IPO value and the lowest among Chinese ADRs seeking to go private at that time. A special committee approved the buyout, and some shareholders dissented, exercising appraisal rights.

Dangdang completed its privatisation in September 2015 and delisted from the NYSE. The company that had been China's pioneering e-commerce platform was now a private company with 2,907 employees, competing in a market dominated by JD.com and Alibaba. The 'China's Amazon' story had ended not with a bang but with a buyout at half the IPO price.