Slaughter and May is advising Alibaba Group on its $692 million investment in Chinese department store operator Intime Retail, which is being represented by Davis Polk & Wardwell.

The e-commerce giant is looking to bring the benefits and convenience of online shopping to customers who visit real bricks-and-mortar stores.

As part of the investment, Alibaba and Intime Retail will form a joint venture to develop online-to-offline, or O2O, business in shopping malls, department stores and supermarkets in China. Alibaba will own about 80 percent of the venture, with Intime Retail controlling the rest.

O2O businesses seek to benefit from the meteoric rise of smartphone use in China and can help turn a search into a shopping trip or meal based on the user’s location.

Alibaba said it will buy $214 million worth of shares in Hong Kong-listed Intime Retail. It also agreed to acquire $478 million of convertible bonds, which would give Alibaba a 26.1 percent stake in the department store operator once the bonds are converted into shares in three years.

A Slaughter and May team led by Hong Kong partner Benita Yu advised Alibaba on the transaction, while Fangda Partners provided PRC law advice.

Davis Polk represented Intime Retail, headed by Hong Kong-based partner Paul Chow.

In recent months Alibaba has gone on a shopping spree, spending more than $2.7 billion to expand into media, chat services and mapping technology.

The expansion has encroached on the turf of social networking giant Tencent Holdings, which has in turn made inroads into Alibaba’s territory with its partnership with China’s No.2 online retailer JD.com.

The purchases come as Alibaba starts its preparations for an initial public offering set to be the biggest-ever technology listing, surpassing Facebook Inc’s $16 billion listing in 2012.