Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, recently enjoyed a few hours as the richest person on planet Earth.

He woke up on July 27 to the good news, but by the time the day’s market had closed he was once again second to Bill Gates.

Jeff’s still doing pretty OK, with an estimated net worth that is closing in on $90 billion (R1,2 trillion), so we’ll save the tears for later.

Coming out left field is Jack Ma, the founder of the Alibaba group, who is now worth close to $40 billion (R530 billion). He’s not resting on his laurels, though, because he’s preparing to go head to head with Amazon in the months to come.

Quartz reports that, despite Brexit, Amazon enjoyed a stellar year in the UK. They snapped up plenty of space, accounting for 23% of warehouse take-up in 2016, but now Alibaba are muscling in:

The turf war in the UK could be a sign of things to come, as the world’s biggest online retailers go head-to-head in new markets. Alibaba—which has almost 500 million active annual consumers on its Chinese retail marketplaces and delivers an average of around 55 million packages a day—is looking abroad for long-term growth. For its part, Amazon already leased 97 million square-feet of space for warehouse fulfillment [sic] and data centers in North America and another 59 million square-feet of space internationally last year.

I wonder if they’ve heard of our favourite storage peeps?

If you look at 2017’s year-to-date share price performance, it seems like Alibaba are sitting pretty:

In terms of the battle for London supremacy, it’s not just their business rivals that could play a factor:

The pinch in the UK, if there is one, could take place in London. That’s because online retailers are likely to seek out urban property to get closer to customers, Mofid says, which could put them in opposition with politicians trying to grapple with the city’s shortfall in housing. In terms of new homes, London is already falling well short of building what’s needed just to keep up with population growth.

Sound familiar, Cape Town?

We’re not able to help with housing issues, but we can offer you some solid storage advice.

Stuff your goods in one of the many Stor-Age facilities dotted around the country (Cape Town, Jozi, Durban, Bloem, Pretoria and PE), and we’ll hook you up with 50% off your first month’s costs.

Take a look at the Cape Town locations – central, hey?

[source:quartz]