Where have all Chinese IPOs gone?

There was a time when a Chinese internet company's initial public offering (IPO) was the hottest thing on Wall Street.

- MEAGHAN TOBIN

As the e-commerce giant Alibaba prepared to go public on the New York Stock Exchange a decade ago, the world's biggest banks competed fiercely to underwrite the offering. When the opening bell rang on September 19, 2014, stock traders cheered, wearing hoodies in Alibaba's signature orange over their suits. The IPO raised $25 billion, the biggest listing ever at the time. Scores of other Chinese companies raised billions in the United States over the next few years.

Those days are firmly in the past. Wall Street has not seen anything close to a blockbuster Chinese IPO in three years. In fact, the drought is getting worse. So far this year, Chinese companies have raised about $580 million in US listings, almost all of it last month from one IPO by the electric vehicle maker Zeekr.

As the geopolitical relationship between China and the United States has deteriorated, it has become increasingly difficult for Chinese companies to find a foreign market where a listing might not be jeopardized by political scrutiny.