In weeks or perhaps days, investors will have an answer to the most popular guessing game in the world’s markets right now: just what is Alibaba really worth and on what basis are those numbers calculated? The Chinese ecommerce giant is expected soon to file its initial documents for a public offering in the US, revealing for the first time what goes on inside a company estimated to control 80 per cent of China’s ecommerce market.
Unusually for such a large and visible company, current estimates of its value range from the $80bn implied by some synthetic securities to the $150bn-plus suggested by optimistic analysts comparing it to other highly valued internet stocks – and come in spite of the drubbing technology stocks have suffered in the past month.
Synthetic securities