Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Nate Anderson on January 6, 2023 in New York. Anderson exposes corporate fraud and ponzi schemes through his company Hindenburg Research.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Hindenburg Research, an advanced 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 the end of last year, I have taken the decision to disband Hindenburg Research. The plan has been to end after finishing the pipeline of ideas that we have worked on the last Ponzi cases that we have just completed and shared with the regulators, that day is today,” Anderson wrote in the note published on the company’s website.
Anderson founded Hindenburg in 2017, and the company has published negative research reports on dozens of companies in the following years. One of the first high-profile reports of Hindenburg came in 2020 and was focused on car startup Nikola. Part of the report included an allegation that Nikola had faked the autonomous capabilities of a semi-truck in a video, which the the company later admitted. Founder Nikola Trevor Milton was later convicted four years in prison.
Many of the targets of Hindenburg’s reports were smaller companies. The company also went after the companies of leading financial figuresincluding Carl Icahn’s Icahn Enterprises LP and the business empire of Indian billionaire Gautam Adani.
The most recent report presented by the company was on January 2 on the auto retailer Caravanwhich he called a “father-son accounting grift for ages.” In a statement, Carvana called the company’s report “intentionally misleading and inaccurate.” The stock fell more than 11% the day after Hindenburg released its report, but has since recovered .
Hindenburg was a short seller as a research house. This means that the firm was betting against the companies it was researching, putting it in a position to profit if the stock declined. As Hindenburg’s reputation grew, some stocks saw immediate negative reactions after the reports were published.
It is not clear how much money Hindenburg made from his short bets.
Hindenburg’s rise came at a time when the controversial practice of short selling was out of favor elsewhere. The meme-stock craze of 2021 pitted retail investors against hedge funds, causing some professional investors to shy away from short selling. Federal officials have also investigated other short sellers in recent years, including the Justice Department that hit Citron’s. Andrew left with securities fraud charges last year.
