Devin Nunes, executive director of Truth Social, speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, USA, on Thursday, March 2, 2023.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Citadel Securities torn Trump media CEO Devin Nunes on Friday for a letter he sent to Nasdaq in which he mentioned Citadel Securities and other major market firms after warning about possible illegal short selling of Trump Media stocks.
“Devin Nunes is the proverbial loser trying to blame ‘naked short selling’ for his falling stock price,” a Citadel Securities spokesman said, underscoring the sharp decline in Trump Media shares since the DJT began public trading. Ticker end of March.
Citadel Securities founder and non-executive chairman Ken Griffin is a major donor to Republican candidates — including Nunes, a former Republican congressman whose company owns the Trump social app.
“Nunes is exactly the kind of person Donald Trump would have shot [The] “Apprentice,” said the Citadel Securities spokesman, referring to the former Republican president’s business competition reality TV show.
“If he [Nunes] “If he worked for Citadel Securities, we would fire him as skills and integrity are at the heart of what we do,” the spokesman added.
A spokeswoman for Trump Media fired back, saying: “Citadel Securities, a corporate giant that has been fined and punished for an incredibly wide range of offenses, including issues related to naked short selling, and is world-famous for preying on everyday retail investors is the last company in the world that should be giving anyone a lecture on “integrity” compared to other companies.”
In a filing later Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump Media noted that it had published this response on Truth Social and to media outlets.
“Instead of supporting our reasonable efforts to promote transparency and compliance, Citadel Securities bizarrely targeted our CEO with a clumsy attack,” the company said in that filing.
Pavlo Gonchar | Light rocket | Getty Images
Nunes’ letter to Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman was dated Thursday, the same day that Trump Media told the SEC that it had given shareholders detailed instructions on how to prevent their DJT shares from being used by short sellers , who bet that the stock price will fall.
Although Trump Media’s stock price has risen sharply over the past three days, it is still trading well below its initial opening price on March 26.
The company that owns Truth Social, which had just $4.1 million in revenue last year, saw its market capitalization drop by billions of dollars due to the share price decline.
Nunes told Friedman in his letter: “I am writing to alert you to possible market manipulation in the shares of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.” to draw attention.”
Nunes suggested that Trump Media’s price was used for so-called naked short selling, a practice in which traders sell shares of a company that the seller had not actually borrowed for the purpose.
Nunes said brokers had a “significant financial incentive to lend nonexistent stock” to short sellers because they could charge unusually high premiums for such loans of Trump Media stock.
“The data provided to us shows that only four market participants were responsible for over 60% of the extraordinary volume of DJT shares traded: Citadel Securities, VIRTU Americas, G1 Execution Services and Jane Street Capital,” Nunes wrote.
More news about Donald Trump
Citadel Securities was the only one of those four companies to comment on Nunes’ letter.
The strong language in their response is striking, especially given the political background of the people involved in Trump Media and Citadel Securities.
Nunes gave up his seat representing a California district in the House of Representatives in late 2021 to take the reins of Trump Media when it was still privately owned. The company went public last month through a merger with a shell company.
Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, is the majority shareholder of Trump Media with a stake of almost 60%.
Citadel Securities founder Griffin donated $5 million to a political action committee that supported former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in her unsuccessful campaign against Trump for the Republican nomination.
In September 2021, Griffin donated $5,800 to Nunes’ congressional campaign, three months before Nunes said he would resign his seat to become CEO of Trump Media, according to a Federal Election Commission filing.
Citadel Advisors, an investment management firm also founded by Griffin, owned nearly 160,000 shares worth $2.8 million in December of Digital World Acquisition Corp., the shell company whose merger with Trump Media last month allowed Trump Media to trade to the to go to the stock market.
A Citadel spokesperson told CNBC when asked about this holding in DWAC: “Consistent with our role as a market maker, we often have some inventory of heavily traded stocks.”
“The purpose is to facilitate trading for customers, not to make a directional bet one way or another,” the spokesperson said.
—Additional reporting by CNBC’s Brian Schwartz.
Source link
2024-04-20 01:32:48
www.cnbc.com
