Alibaba probe stirs worry about what’s next for Chinese tech

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. led a second day of frenetic selling among China’s largest tech firms, driven by fears that antitrust scrutiny will spread beyond Jack Ma’s internet empire and engulf the country’s most powerful corporations.

Alibaba and its three largest rivals — Tencent Holdings Ltd., food delivery giant Meituan and JD.com Inc. — have shed nearly $200 billion in Hong Kong over the two sessions since Thursday when regulators revealed an investigation into alleged monopolistic practices at Ma’s signature company. That marked the formal start of the Communist Party’s crackdown on not just Alibaba but also, potentially, the wider and increasingly influential tech sphere.

“It is very hard to predict the outcome of the Chinese government’s ongoing investigation into Alibaba and other large consumer internet platforms,” Baird analyst Colin Sebastian wrote in a note. He cut his price target on Alibaba’s U.S.-listed shares to $285 from $325, citing “uncertainty around government oversight and potential for direct regulatory action in the coming year.”