(Reuters) – Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma and Chairman Joe Tsai bought millions worth of shares in the Chinese e-commerce giant in the fourth quarter, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, sending the company’s U.S.-listed shares up around 7%.
Ma bought $50 million worth of Hong Kong-traded stock, the report said, citing a person with knowledge of the matter.
It added Tsai purchased about $151 million worth of Alibaba’s U.S.-traded shares in the quarter through his Blue Pool Management family investment.
The Jack Ma Foundation, which handles media queries for the Chinese billionaire, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Alibaba had said in November the family trust of Ma, who stepped down as executive chairman of Alibaba in 2019, was set to sell 10 million American Depository Shares of Alibaba Group Holdings for about $871 million.
Alibaba is in the middle of an overhaul. It scrapped plans to spin off its cloud business in November, citing uncertainties created by U.S. export curbs on tech used in artificial intelligence applications.
The spinoff was part of the company’s plan to split its business into six main units covering e-commerce, media and the cloud.
For long a dominant player in China’s online shopping market, Alibaba has been facing competition from PDD Holdings’ Pinduoduo. A slower-than-expected recovery in retail after China lifted pandemic curbs has also pressured the company.
The company had said in December group CEO Eddie Wu would take over as CEO of its domestic e-commerce arm Taobao and Tmall Group, just days after he became the head of the cloud business.
(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
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