Alibaba slid by as much as 3% at the stock market on Monday, following its founder Jack Ma's absence from public sights for over two months.
Ma's absence from the public view comes as the Chinese government has increased its regulatory pressure on Ant Group and Alibaba which had formerly culminated in the forestalling of Ant Group's proposed world record IPO.
Alibaba has also faced increased in regulatory pressures recently. A probe into the e-commerce giant's seller exclusivity tactics was opened in December as the company is now being investigated by authorities for antitrust violations.
The ramp up in regulatory pressure in Ma's businesses came weeks after Ma criticized China's financial regulatory system at a conference in Shanghai. Ma reportedly dismissed the China's global financial regulations as "an old people's club" and said that "we can't use yesterday's methods to regulate the future."
Ma has not been seen in public in more than two months and he was abruptly replaced as a judge on an African entrepreneurship TV show he founded late last year, called Africa's Business Heroes , according to a report from Yahoo Finance.