Jeff Yass, the billionaire Wall Street financier and Republican megadonor who’s a major investor in TikTok’s parent company, was also the biggest institutional shareholder of the shell company that recently merged with former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company.
A December regulatory filing showed that Mr. Yass’s trading company, Susquehanna International Group, owned about 2 percent of Digital World Acquisition Corp., which merged with Trump Media & Technology Group on Friday. The stake, which included roughly 605,000 shares, was value roughly $22 million based on Digital World’s last closing share price.
It is unclear whether Susquehanna still owns these shares because large investors only disclose their holdings to regulators periodically. However, if it retained its shares, Yassa would grow to be certainly one of Trump Media’s larger institutional shareholders when it goes live this week following the merger.
Digital World shares are up about 140 percent this 12 months because the merger with the parent company of Truth Social, Trump’s social media platform, approaches and Trump becomes the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee.
“Susquehanna is a market maker and has no economic interest in Trump Media,” the corporate said in a statement. “A company’s long position is offset by short positions of the same size.”
Regulatory filings show the corporate used offsetting securities in an attempt to reduce stock gains or losses.
The company’s statement didn’t provide comment on whether the corporate still owns a stake in Digital World or on the connection between Yass and Trump.
Yass has been in the news these days for a lot of reasons. Mr. Yass’ company, a major contributor to Republican Party candidates and political motion committees that support libertarian and conservative causes, including Club for Growth, can also be a large shareholder in ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company. US investment firms Susquehanna, BlackRock and General Atlantic and others own 60 percent of ByteDance.
This month, the House passed a bill forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok, a Chinese-controlled social media company.
The Club for Growth has tried to lobby Republicans in Congress to oppose any effort to ban TikTok if it stays controlled by China, and Mr. Yass helped the conservative organization fund that effort. (The Club for Growth opposed Trump’s re-election campaign but appears to have come to terms with it.)
Trump supported a ban on TikTok in the United States, but recently modified his position. Just a few weeks ago he confirmed that he had a transient meeting with Mr. Yass – identified in 2022 Wall Street Journal column as a “never Trumper” – but said the 2 men had never discussed TikTok.
An individual near the Trump campaign said Yass was expected to make a large donation to a group supporting the previous president’s political campaign.
Susquehanna, which makes it easy to trade hundreds of stocks using mathematical models, is not the only company that may earn cash in the Digital World. In February, Digital World disclosed that it had raised $50 million from a group of institutional investors to cover merger expenses. Investors have lent the corporate money that could be converted into shares. The investors involved in the transaction haven’t yet been disclosed.
Overall, hedge funds and trading firms held about 5 percent of Digital World’s 30 million shares outstanding at the top of last 12 months. The overwhelming majority of Digital World’s roughly 400,000 shareholders are individual investors, a lot of whom are Trump supporters.
The surge in Digital World’s stock price this 12 months has added billions of dollars to the worth of Trump’s $79 million stake in Trump Media. Trump can even be issued a class of stock that can give him a minimum of 55 percent of the voting power on all shareholder actions.
The merger was finalized just before Monday’s deadline set by Trump to secure bond to cover a $454 million wonderful imposed by a judge in a civil fraud case.
The former president’s Trump Media stock could provide him with a financial lifeline to lift the money needed to acquire the bonds. But to try this, he needs Trump Media’s seven-member board to remove a restriction that forestalls him from selling stock or using the stock as collateral for bonds for the subsequent six months.
The board includes Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr., and three former members of his administration: Kash Patel, who was chief of staff to Trump’s acting defense secretary; former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer; and Linda McMahon, former administrator of the Small Business Administration.
Ms. McMahon is chairing a large Trump fundraiser scheduled for April 6 in Palm Beach, Florida, in response to a copy of the invitation. The event is co-hosted by billionaire investor John Paulson and chaired by several Wall Street financiers. Mr. Yass isn’t mentioned as certainly one of them.
Maggie Haberman reporting contributed.
