Hedge Fund Elliott Sold Twitter Stock Before Elon Musk’s Takeover Negotiations

Elliott Management, the hedge fund that pushed for big changes at Twitter two years ago, exited the stock during the second quarter, soon after Elon Musk announced plans to buy the social media company, a regulatory filing shows.

The filing on Monday, showed that Elliott no longer owned any common stock in Twitter on June 30. It had owned 10 million shares at the end of the first quarter.

Twitter’s shares, which closed at $44.50 (roughly Rs. 3,500) on Monday had climbed as high as $51.70 (roughly Rs. 4,100) in April, when Musk was offering to spend $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,49,240 crore) to acquire the company. Shares dropped when he tried to pull out of the deal in early July.

Elliott invested in Twitter in early 2020 and called for the ouster of Jack Dorsey, one of the company’s co-founders and its CEO at the time.

The company and the hedge fund soon reached an agreement in which the hedge fund got a seat on Twitter’s board and Dorsey was replaced in late 2021. Elliott exited the board last year.

Some other prominent investors also cut their Twitter holdings.

Hedge fund D.E. Shaw & Company owned 932,716 shares at the end of the second quarter, after having selling 3.7 million shares.

Balyasny Asset Management sold 1.3 million shares to own 172,821 shares while SRS Investment Management sold 7 million shares to own 125,226 shares on June 30.

The so-called 13-F filings are closely watched for investment trends, even though the data is released with a delay and can be dated.

Some firms established new positions, with filings showing that Pentwater Capital and Segantii Capital Management made new bets to own 18 million and 7.3 million shares respectively. Citadel Advisors LLC added 3.3 million shares, and now owns 4 million shares.

© Thomson Reuters 2022