Cara Lombardo
Elon Musk ’s decision to end his war with Twitter Inc. isn’t just a big win for the social-media company, but also for some big-name investors like Carl Icahn.
Icahn quietly amassed a Twitter stake of well over $500 million in the past few months and made a sizable profit Tuesday after the shares shot up on news that Musk offered to close his $44 billion purchase of the social-media giant on the original terms, according to people familiar with the matter.
Twitter shares jumped 22% to $52 Tuesday. Icahn paid in the mid-$30s a share for the stake, the people said, meaning the estimated profit for his Icahn Enterprises LP could exceed $250 million.
Other big-name investors including D.E. Shaw Group and Daniel Loeb’s Third Point LLC also placed bets on Twitter shares in recent months and could notch sizable gains of their own, other people familiar with the matter said.
Icahn made the investment on the belief the billionaire Tesla Inc. /zigman2/quotes/203558040/lastsale TSLA -1.66% chief wouldn’t go through a trial that he looked likely to lose, some of the people said. Icahn also believed that the stock was worth close to the mid-$30s anyway in the long term, meaning the downside would be limited even if Musk prevailed at trial.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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