Millennium Management, the US hedge fund founded by billionaire trader Israel “Izzy” Englander, is shorting more than €200 million worth of shares in two of Ireland’s biggest companies.
At the same time it has a short bet against 0.50 per cent of Bank of Ireland’s shares, which is worth about €52 million at the bank’s current share price. A short trade is a risky bet in which a trader borrows shares from a broker and sells them on the open market. The trader waits for the price to fall sufficiently so they can buy new shares, return them to the broker and pocket the difference in profit. It is predicated on the trader’s conviction that the share price will drop at some point in the future, though it is not always possible to glean what the trader’s full strategy might be.
Mr Englander’s firm has, over the last year, taken out sizeable bets against a number of other Irish publicly listed companies, including CRH, Origin Enterprises, Smurfit Kappa and Kingspan.