One of the world's most famous investors has sold out almost all of his holdings in Asian business group Alibaba.

Renowned billionaire George Soros, who earlier in the decade turned his hedge fund empire into a family office structure, has sold most of his stake in Asian e-commerce giant Alibaba, reports said.

A regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly said that Soros Fund Management had, as at 30 June, sold almost all of 60,000 shares, with a value of $4.88 million, Reuters said. The news service also noted that another prominent hedge fund player, the Tiger Global Management investment fund, has cut its stake in the Chinese group from 6.7 million shares at the end of March to just 93,494 shares three months later.

The report noted that Alibaba reached historic highs for its shares in November last year, two months after its record-breaking $25 billion initial public offering on Wall Street. Since November, it has lost more than a third of its value. Recent results by the firm have disappointed analysts.

The IPO of the e-commerce firm was a large liquidity event, making founder Jack Ma one of the world’s richest men, and his firm’s purchases and activities are now a daily feature of the business and general news pages in Asia.

In the case of Soros, the Hungarian-born investment tycoon, nowadays known as much for his political activism as for his financial actions, he has also sharply changed the nature of his business empire. In July 2011, Soros Fund Management stopped managing funds for outside investors and became a family office. To some extent, regulatory changes in the US and elsewhere have been a factor. A number of other hedge fund firms in the US have taken the same course.