It sure seemed like a little piece of Silicon Valley, circa the turn of the century, had found its way into China. While Chinese stocks have been volatile in the past year, none, arguably, went on a wilder roller-coaster ride than e-commerce company Alibaba.com.

When the Hangzhou-based company listed in Hong Kong last November – before all the bad news about subprime had truly hit home in Asia – its shares promptly tripled in price on the first day to HK$39.50, giving the company a market capitalisation of US$25bn. It was trading at multiples of 306 times projected 2007 earnings.