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Nate Anderson January 6, 2023 in New York. Anderson exposes corporate fraud and Ponzi schemes through his company Hindenburg Research.
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Hindenburg Research, the new research and investment firm that made a name for itself with several successful short bets, is closing, founder Nate Anderson announced Wednesday.
“As I have shared with family, friends and our team since late last year, I have made the decision to dissolve Hindenburg Research. The plan was to stop working after we finished the pipeline of ideas we were working on. “The latest Ponzi cases we have just completed and are sharing with regulators today is the day,” Anderson wrote in a note posted on the company’s website.
Anderson founded Hindenburg in 2017, and since then the company has published negative research reports on dozens of companies. One of Hindenburg’s first high-profile reports came out in 2020 and was devoted to automotive startup Nikola. Part of the report included an allegation that Nicola faked the semi truck’s autonomous capabilities in a video that the company later admitted. Nikola founder Trevor Milton was later sentenced to four years in prison.
Many of the targets of the Hindenburg reports were smaller companies. The firm also went after the companies key financial indicatorsincluding Carl Icahn Icahn Enterprises LP and the business empire of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.
The last report filed by the company was on January 2nd about the auto retailer Caravanwhich was called “father-son”. accounting theft forever.” In a statement, Carvano called the firm’s report “deliberately false and inaccurate.” Shares fell more than 11% the day after Hindenburg released its report, but have since recovered.
Hindenburg was a short seller as well as a research house. That means the firm made bets against the companies it researched, allowing it to profit if the stock fell. As Hindenburg’s reputation grew, some stocks immediately backfired after the reports were published.
It is unclear how much money Hindenburg made from his short bets.
Hindenburg’s rise came at a time when the controversial short-selling practice was failing elsewhere. The meme craze has pitted retail investors against hedge funds in 2021, causing some professional investors to abandon short selling. Federal officials have also investigated other short sellers in recent years, including the Justice Department, which hit Citron’s Andrei Levy with allegations of securities fraud last year.
