Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, reveals its quarterly results today. Since the company’s flotation in September shareholders have had plenty to cheer, starting with Singles Day, an annual online marketing promotion, when Alibaba’s portals handled sales worth $9.3 billion. The share price has climbed, and many analysts are bullish. Even so, investors have worries. This week Chinese regulators criticised Alibaba for selling counterfeit and illegal items. A bigger concern may be yesterday’s decision by Yahoo, an American internet firm which owns about one-fifth of Alibaba, to hive off its $40 billion stake into a new division, called SpinCo, to be owned at first by Yahoo’s shareholders. This will lock up a lot of shares for a while, reducing liquidity. Four years ago Alibaba’s chairman, Jack Ma, outraged Yahoo by suddenly spinning out his firm’s payments division—without consulting or compensating Yahoo. Now Yahoo has got a little of its own back.