No Ma high times

Alibaba boss’ $9B loss could grow

The global stock market rout has been costly to Jack Ma — to the tune of about $9 billion.

Ma, the founder and CEO of Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba, has seen his stake shrink from an alltime high of more than $18.5 billion in November to about half as much on Monday — with some investors thinking his fortune could dwindle even further.

Alibaba — a cross between PayPal, eBay and Amazon — has been pummeled by the recent Chinese equity selloff, with its losses cutting deeper than comparative American companies.

Alibaba closed on Monday at $62.59 a share, down almost 50 percent from its alltime high of $119.15 a share on Nov. 10 last year.

Speculation abounded on Monday after Barron’s pub lished an article over the weekend speculating that the company’s stock could fall another 50 percent.

Alibaba has since hit back at the story, labeling it “misleading” and calling into question the metrics that the paper used in its valuation.

The reversal of fortune for Alibaba comes almost exactly a year after Ma came to the New York Stock Exchange for the company’s initial public of fering on Sept. 18, 2014.

The IPO was one of the most hyped ever, and for good reason — investors valued Alibaba at $231 billion, making it the largest initial offering ever.

That made the ecommerce portal more valuable than companies like Facebook and CocaCola — two operations that have since surged past Ma’s company.

But Alibaba has been trading below its IPO price since Aug. 31, closing as low as $60.91, with no bottom in sight.

Ma might not be so worried about his dwindling fortunes, since he complained in June that “life is tough” for one of the world’s wealthiest men.

“If I had another life, I would keep my company private,” he said during a speech before the Economic Club of New York then.