Introduction

Introduction

Alibaba is an unusual name for a Chinese company. Its founder, Jack Ma, a former English teacher, is an unlikely corporate titan.

Yet the house that Jack built is home to the largest virtual shopping mall in the world, soon to overtake Walmart in the amount of goods sold. The company’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2014 raised $25 billion, the largest stock market flotation in history. In the months that followed, Alibaba’s shares soared, making it one of the top ten most valuable companies in the world, worth almost $300 billion. Alibaba became the most valuable Internet company in the world after Google, its shares worth more than Amazon and eBay combined. Nine days before the IPO, Jack celebrated his fiftieth birthday, the soaring value of his stake making him the richest man in Asia.

But since that peak Alibaba’s life as a publicly listed company has not gone according to plan. Its shares fell by half from their post-IPO peak, even briefly falling below the initial offer price. Investor concerns were sparked in early 2015 by a surprising entanglement with a government agency over intellectual property, then fueled by the slowing Chinese economy and volatile stock markets, which dragged down Alibaba’s shares in their wake.