Digital World was incorporated in Miami a month after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election.
The company filed for an initial public stock offering this spring, and it sold shares to the public on the Nasdaq stock exchange last month. The I.P.O. raised about $283 million, and Digital World drummed up another $11 million by selling shares to investors through a so-called private placement.
Digital World is backed by some marquee Wall Street names and others with high-powered connections. In regulatory filings after the I.P.O., major hedge funds including D.E. Shaw, Highbridge Capital Management, Lighthouse Partners and Saba Capital Management have reported owning substantial percentages of Digital World.
Digital World’s chief executive is Patrick F. Orlando, a former employee of investment banks including the German Deutsche Bank, where he specialized in the trading of financial instruments known as derivatives. He created his own investment bank, Benessere Capital, in 2012, according to a recent regulatory filing.
Digital World’s chief financial officer, Luis Orleans-Braganza, is a member of Brazil’s National Congress.
Mr. Orlando disclosed in a recent filing that he owned nearly 18 percent of the company’s outstanding stock. Mr. Orlando and representatives for Digital World did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
This is not Mr. Orlando’s first blank-check company. He has created at least two others, including one, Yunhong International, that is incorporated in the offshore tax haven of the Cayman Islands.
At the time that investors bought shares in Digital World, it had not disclosed what, if any, companies it planned to acquire. On its website, Digital World said that its goal was “to focus on combining with a leading tech company.”
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/us/politics/trump-media-spac.html
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