An investment firm founded by two former stars of the TV show “The Apprentice” has acquired nearly all of former President Donald J. Trump’s 5.5% stake in his social media company, according to a regulatory filing Thursday. Sold.
United Atlantic Ventures has increased its stake in Trump Media & Technology Group in the past few days after a lock-up clause that prohibited large investors, including Trump, from selling the stock ended on September 19th. 7.5 million shares were sold.
Two presidents of United Atlantic, Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, were the founders of Trump Media and its flagship social media product, Truth Social. The two were contestants on the second season of the reality show “The Apprentice,” which helped raise Trump’s national profile before running for president in 2016.
At the current stock price of about $14 per share, their combined stake is worth about $100 million.
A lockup restricting stock sales also applied to Mr. Trump, but the former president said days before the restriction expired that he had no plans to sell his 115 million shares. His roughly 60% stake in Trump Media has lost billions of dollars in value over the past few months and is now worth $1.6 billion.
Trump Media has been trading more actively than usual since the lockup ended, with its stock price down nearly 5% during that period. Overall, shares have fallen 78% since the company merged with a cash-rich special acquisition vehicle in March.
Mr. Lichinsky and Mr. Moss were “fired” from the show by Mr. Trump, but Mr. Lichinsky went on to work as head of Mr. Trump’s television production company.
Shortly after Trump left the White House in 2021, Liczynski and Moss approached Trump with the idea of starting his own social media company. The idea was appealing to Trump, who had been banned from most social media platforms after his supporters rioted in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021.
They agreed to join forces to form Trump Media and introduce Truth Social, the platform that became Trump’s primary online megaphone as he ran for president again.
But less than a year after Truth Social’s debut, Trump fell out with Lichinsky and Moss.
Trump Media argued in a lawsuit earlier this year that the two had no right to acquire as much stock in the company because they had performed poorly and delayed the company’s entry into the public markets.
However, the two won and got all their quotas. The investment firm only owns 100 of the 7.525 million Trump Media shares it originally held, according to Thursday’s filing that listed Mr. Liczynski as a managing member of United Atlantic.
