NY-based investment company Soros Fund Management bought shares of ViacomCBS, Baidu
Vipshop Holdings Ltd and Tencent Music Entertainment Group during the first quarter of 2021, according to the most recent filings of the investment company.
Soros bought $194 million in media conglomerate ViacomCBS shares, $77 million in tech giant Baidu shares, $46 million worth of online discount retailer Vipshop Holdings Ltd shares and $34 million of Tencent Music Entertainment Group’s shares.
The company didn’t hold the shares prior to Archegos’s collapse, Bloomberg reported on Saturday (May 15) citing a person familiar with the matter.
Archegos Capital Management was a family office that managed the personal assets of former hedge fund manager Bill Hwang. Based in New York, it went on to become one of the biggest Asia-focused hedge funds, running more than $5 billion at its peak, according to the Wall Street Journal. On March 26, the firm defaulted on margin calls from several global investment banks.
Credit Suisse said it will take a $4.7 billion hit while Japan’s Nomura warned investors of a $2 billion loss. Archegos had large, concentrated positions in ViacomCBS, Baidu, Vipshop, Farfetch, and other companies. The Wall Street Journal reported that Hwang lost $8 billion in 10 days while Bloomberg reported that Hwang lost $20 billion in 2 days. The scandal is expected to cost the finance industry about $10 billion and has prompted an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The name “Archegos” comes from Greek word for leader.
Shares of Archegos investments ViacomCBS, Discovery and others temporarily nosedived during the Archegos unwinding. Of note, Discovery soared 17% in the premarket trading on Monday (May 17) to sell for $ $41.70 a share as AT&T confirmed it has reached an agreement with the New York-based company to merge its WarnerMedia unit with Discovery to take on rivals such as Disney and Netflix.
The merger, which is expected to result in a new company consisted of Discovery’s and WarnerMedia’s assets, could be valued at $150 billion including debt, according to an estimate by the Financial Times.
The biggest exit for Soros in the quarter was Palantir Technologies Inc. Soros sold 18.5 million shares valued at about $435 million. As of 2021Q1, Soros Fund Management LLC which is run by Chief Investment Officer Dawn Fitzpatrick and owned by billionaire George Soros, owns 194 stocks with a total value of $4.7 billion.
Thousands of family offices around the globe manage of $6 trillion in assets, according to CNBC, but are exempt from SEC disclosure rules that require other funds and investors to report large holdings in publicly traded companies.
