By Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Makiko Yamazaki
BOSTON/TOKYO (Reuters) – U.S. hedge fund Third Point LLC, which had been pressing Sony Corp to make changes including spinning-off of its chip unit, has sold all of its American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) in the Japanese electronics company, regulatory filings showed.
But the fund, headed by one of the world’s highest-profile activist investors, Daniel Loeb, still owns a large portion of the company’s Japanese shares, a person familiar with the fund told Reuters.
The filings showed Third Point owned 1.5 million ADRs at the end of December 2019 and 675,000 at the end of March. At the end of June, Third Point’s filing no longer listed Sony as a holding.
Securities and Exchange Commission filings show what investors hold in U.S. stock. It is not clear from the U.S. filings what Third Point’s holdings are in foreign stock or how much it owns in Sony’s common stock listed in Japan.
A Sony representative said the company would not comment on individual shareholders. Third Point declined to comment.
Third Point revealed its position in Sony last year when it called on the firm to spin off its highly successful chip business and sell off non-core assets such as Sony Financial to position itself as a leading global entertainment company.
The effort marked the second time in six years that Loeb has targeted the Japanese firm.
Sony rejected the call to spin off the chip unit, saying the business is “a crucial growth driver” for the Japanese company, and instead of selling Sony Financial, it took full control.
Still, Sony has been a big winner for the New York-based hedge fund. Shares of Sony have surged about 80% since April last year, when Reuters first reported that the fund was building a stake.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in BOSTON, Chris Gallagher and Makiko Yamazaki in TOKYO; Editing by Tom Hogue and Christopher Cushing)
