China’s Alibaba tells employees not to lose faith as Black Monday drags shares below IPO price, costs Jack Ma US$545 million

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Alibaba's lead founder Jack Ma Young may be praying for good fortune as Monday's stock market crash means the stock price of the e-commerce giant has shed 35 percent this year. Photo: Sam Tsang

Published: 1:15pm, 26 Aug 2015Updated: 3:40pm, 26 Aug 2015

Even staffers at China’s e-commerce king Alibaba seem to have been spooked by Monday’s stock market crash, which pulled the seemingly unassailable company’s New York-listed shares below their initial public offering price for the first time and prompted its chief executive to issue a damage-control email reassuring employees of a rebound.

After global markets were rattle by one of the worst trading days in many years on “Black Monday”, Alibaba's Daniel Zhang urged his work force to “ignore the [company's] stock price” and “focus on customers” in an internal email sent on Tuesday.

Alibaba's shares shed nearly 5 per cent and got as low as US$58.14 on Monday before ending the day at US$65.86. The company listed last September for a record US$25 billion, when its shares traded at US$68. They got as high as US$119.50 in November.

Many of its employees are shareholders in the company, which controls around 80 per cent of online shopping revenue in China and owns the hugely lucrative Taobao and Tmall e-commerce platforms.

The total holdings of Alibaba's staffers were estimated at US$41 billion when it went public, media reports claimed.