BEIJING, November 22 (TMTPost)— A top executive of Alibaba Group made clarification as cofounder Jack Ma’s offloading move intensified concerns after the company dropped a spinoff plan for its key unit.

Credit：Visual China

Disclosure of Jack Ma’s sales plan coincided with the release date of Alibaba’s quarterly financial results , which led to misunderstanding that Ma turned bearish, reported Tencent Tech News and many other Chinese news media outlets on Wednesday, citing a post of Jiang Fang, the Chief Talent Officer and a partner of Alibaba.

In the post on Alibaba’s intranet, Jiang clarified that Jack Ma’s office has signed an offloading contract with stock brokers earlier this year, and the contract, which aims to fund investments in agriculture technology, public welfare and other projects at home and abroad, required Ma to disclose the conditional offloading plan in the future in mid November.The brokers didn’t know November 16 is the day that Alibaba released financial report as well as the spinoff development of its cloud unit, Jiang said in the post.  “Ma hasn’t sold a single share” for sales at a price they set in August is much higher than the current Alibaba stock price, according to Jiang.

Funds under Jack Ma’s family trust plans to sell about 5 million American Depositary Shares (ADSs) of Alibaba each, for a total of about $871 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on November 16. That day Alibaba said, in a financial report for the third quarter, that it decided not to proceed with a full spinoff of Cloud Intelligence Group as the recent expansion U.S. export restrictions on advanced computing chips has created uncertainties for the unit’s prospects.

Alibaba warned the new export control “may materially and adversely affect” the cloud unit’s ability to offer products and services and to perform under existing contracts, thereby negatively affecting the company’s results of operations and financial condition. The Chinese e-commerce giant said it will focus on "developing a sustainable growth model for the cloud unit under the fluid circumstances".

A day after disclosure of sales plan, Jack Ma’s office announced last Friday that Ma is firmly bullish on Alibaba and will also firmly hold its shares even though the company is currently highly undervalued. It added that Ma’s latest plan is a long-run planning.

At her post reported Wednesday, Jiang Fang reiterated Ma will unwaveringly hold onto his stakes, stressing his stance is not lip service but a fact. Ma won’t sell Alibaba shares, Jiang said, quoting aforementioned announcement of Ma’s office that the current stock price is much lower than the firm’s actual value. The executive added Ma believes value of Alibaba businesses will get further boost.

In the same post, Jiang dismissed talks about a massive layoff involving 25,000 people. She said her company has filed a police report over the rumor and hope to see the rumor mongers to be held liable. Yan Qiao, head of public relations and vice president, has denied the layoff last weekend and noted that is similar to the one in May, when Alibaba said it would hire a total of 15,000 people this year for all the six business groups, as a response to the rumor.

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