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JP Morgan Snatches 10% of Twitter

Written on
Feb 28, 2011 
Author
Gavin Dunaway  |
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JP Morgan Snatches 10% of Twitter

money_small.jpgADOTAS – Does JP Morgan Chase wants to pull a Goldman-Sachs-Facebook on Twitter? (That doesn’t sound nearly as dirty as I thought it would.) Public investing in private companies is totally the new hedge fund.

A $1.2 billion digital growth fund, with capital primarily committed by JPM, appears to be the second largest shareholder of Twitter after cofounder and former CEO Evan Williams, who owns $700 million in Twitter. In some interesting hush-hush dealings, angel investor Chris Sacca used JPM’s cash to acquire $400 million in Twitter stock via secondary markets. Apparently $100 million in stock came from Williams himself.

These purchases mean that JPM is now a 10% owner of Twitter; the investment puts Twitter’s valuation at $4 billion. The fund has a great deal more cash on hand, which TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington speculates will go toward stock in other private social companies (Facebook, Zynga).

So will JPM’s biggest clients get first dibs on a new “special purpose vehicle”? The bigger question, however, is will it draw nearly as much interest as Goldman’s Facebook funnel?





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