Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma has abandoned plans to sell shares in the company.

Shares in the Chinese tech giant plummeted last week after it abandoned a plan to spin off its $11bn cloud business.

The Ma family trust was set to sell 10m shares this week.

Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma has cancelled plans to sell shares in the company after its share price plunged last week.

Last Thursday, the Chinese tech giant abandoned plans to spin off its $11bn cloud business. The company’s shares plunged in response, losing $26bn in two days.

On Tuesday, the Ma family trust was set to sell 10 million American depositary shares in the company for $870 million. Documents confirming the sale were made public on Thursday, adding to investor concerns.

Company employees were also concerned about Ma’s move, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

However, according to media reports, Alibaba apparently decided to bolster employee confidence by releasing an internal memo assuring them that Ma “has not sold a single share”.

Ma’s family office had planned to use the proceeds to invest in agriculture and charitable organisations, Jiang added.

But Ma is not selling the shares because their current value is lower than the real value, the note said. She added that the timing of the disclosure was a “coincidence” that caused “serious misunderstanding”.

On Friday, Ma’s representatives told the South China Morning Post newspaper that he remained “very positive” about Alibaba’s business. Alibaba owns SCMP.

Ma has been selling his stake in Alibaba since leaving the company’s board of directors in 2020. He stepped down as CEO in 2019.

The sell-off in Alibaba shares last week was the sharpest in a year. The stock plunge reduced Ma’s fortune to about $30 billion, down 9 per cent year-over-year, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. At the peak of his fortune in late October 2020, Ma, who was once Asia’s richest man, was worth $60 billion.

Alibaba’s share price has come under pressure after Ma’s criticism of Beijing sparked a backlash against his companies in late 2020. The tech market titan, known for his flamboyance, also disappeared from the public eye.

In addition, China’s 2020 crackdown on the country’s tech sector, which reduced the market value of five major tech companies by $1.1 trillion: Alibaba, Tencent, Meituan, Baidu and JD.com as of July, was followed by Beijing signalling regulatory easing in the same month.

Alibaba shares closed unchanged at $78.96 in the United States on Wednesday. They have fallen 10 per cent since the start of the year.