The shareholders of a Chinese e-commerce firm Vipshop have filed a lawsuit against the banking giants in a New York federal court. Credit: Okan Caliskan from Pixabay.

The shareholders of Chinese e-commerce firm Vipshop have reportedly filed a lawsuit against Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley in connection with stake sales linked to the collapsed family office Archegos.

The Vipshop investors accused the banking giants of trading on inside information when selling the stock they held for Archegos, Bloomberg reported.

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According to the lawsuit, both Goldman and Morgan Stanley sold a number of sizeable blocks of shares in companies in which Archegos was also an investor after privately learning that the family office may fail to meet margin calls.

The investors, who filed the lawsuit against the banks in a New York federal court, claimed that these stake sales drove the firm’s shares into ‘a complete tailspin’.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley did not comment on the news.

Goldman offloaded $6.6 bn worth of shares of Baidu, Tencent Music Entertainment Group and Vipshop in March, Bloomberg reported earlier citing an email sent to the bank’s clients.

It also offloaded $3.9bn of shares in ViacomCBS, Discovery, Farfetch, iQiyi and GSX Techedu.

Archegos, controlled by Bill Hwang, used borrowed money to accumulate a concentrated portfolio of stocks worth over $100bn.

The firm collapsed in March this year when some of its stocks fell, prompting margin calls from banks, which then sold off their holdings.

Lenders, including Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Nomura, lost more than $10bn in the aftermath of the collapse.

Archegos is currently being probed by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

According to a recent report by Bloomberg, the SEC is investigating the family office for possible involvement in market manipulation.