A Bloomberg report said Greenlight Capital Inc, which is run by hedge-fund manager David Einhorn, had asked a court to issue an order for investor website Seeking Alpha to identify the source who had shared the fund's holding in Micron Technology Inc prior to the public disclosure.
In a November 25 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Greenlight said that it acquired 23 million shares of the Boise, Idaho-based memorny chips maker in the third quarter of last year. 11 days prior to the filing, Greenlight had shared the Micron stake with the SEC and asked the agency to not release the information of the name of the company of its latest investment then.
The investment manager said in a New York State Supreme Court position in Manhattan yesterday that "Valuable Insights," a frequent contributor to Seeking Alpha, posted the confidential information on November 14, which was prior to Greenlight's disclosure to the SEC. The hedge fund claimed that because of the untimely disclosure, the costs of the company had driven up.
Greenlight said in the petition, "Upon information and belief, Valuable Insights owned shares in Micron at the time of the postings. The trading price for Micron's shares rose immediately after Valuable Insight's posting. Because this was the very time frame in which Greenlight was in the process of building its Micron position, it was forced to pay higher prices for its Micron securities."
Greenlight also claimed that it had shared its Micron position to people who had a duty to keep the information private, which include employees, lawyers, brokers and fund administrators. "Valuable Insights," said Greenlight, had to be one of the people or have procured the information from one of them.
When asked by Bloomberg for comment about Greenlight's petition, Seeking Alpha did not respond immediately to the request. The news agency said the site described itself as an investment research platform created by former Morgan Stanley analyst David Jackson in 2004.
