Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce company, is attempting to woo more customers outside China with a global advertising campaign and the opening of new European headquarters in London.

Alibaba, which connects mainly small businesses with suppliers and trading partners over an Ebay-like internet platform, has 40m registered users, around 9.5m of which are from outside China.

Maggie Choo, general manager of the European business, said the economic downturn was the perfect time to expand, as small companies turned to the internet as a cheaper way to do business. “In the UK alone we have had a 55 per cent increase in user numbers in the last year, and in the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region it is even higher, around 80 per cent,” she said.