(Yicai) Nov. 22 -- Alibaba Group Holding’s founder Jack Ma has not sold shares of the Chinese e-commerce giant as planned, its chief people officer clarified after regulatory filings in the United States last week showed that he intended to offload 10 million.

Ma inked the deal with stock brokers earlier this year, but the price set in August was much higher than Alibaba’s current share price, Jane Jiang said in an internal company email seen by Yicai.

Ma’s two family trusts planned to pare their holdings of Alibaba’s US-listed shares by five million each yesterday, according to filings posted on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s website on Nov. 16. The sale would have been worth USD789 million based on yesterday's closing price.

Alibaba’s stock price plunged 9 percent on Nov. 16 on fears that Ma was selling the holding because he is not optimistic about the Hangzhou-based company’s prospects. Ma is confident about its future, Jiang said today.

Also, contrary to a recent online rumor, Alibaba is not laying off 25,000 staff, Jiang said, adding that the firm has reported the matter to the police. Alibaba employed 224,955 as of Sept. 30, down 3,720 on the end of the previous quarter, according to its latest earnings report.

The firm’s Hong Kong-listed shares [HKG: 9988] rose 1.1 percent to end at HKD76.85 (USD9.86) apiece today. In pre-market trading in New York, Alibaba [NYSE: BABA] was 0.9 percent higher at USD79.64 as of 7.45 a.m. local time, after gaining 0.6 percent yesterday.

Alibaba has undergone many major changes this year. In March it split itself into six business groups to be spun off and independently listed in the future. And in June, Daniel Zhang, Ma’s successor, resigned as chairman and chief executive, to be replaced by Joseph Tsai and Wu Yongming, respectively.

Alibaba said earlier this month that it will not fully spin off its cloud business because of the impact of restrictions on the export of US chips. It is also putting the initial public offering of its grocery arm Freshippo on ice for the time being.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor