Billionaire investor Carl Icahn sold his roughly 2.7% stake in Lyft Inc. ahead of the ride-hailing company’s initial public offering last week, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jonathan Christodoro, a former Icahn Capital LP managing director who sat on Lyft’s board until last month, connected Icahn with the buyer of the stake worth roughly $550 million at the IPO price, some of the people said. The buyer’s identity couldn’t be learned.
The exact timing and motivation for Icahn’s move weren’t clear, though he had held the stake for roughly four years — a relatively long period for him. The activist investor, who rarely invests in private companies, had been unhappy with Lyft’s plan to use supervoting shares to give its two founders near-majority voting rights, some of the people said.
It isn’t clear what price Icahn got for his shares, but the investment was sure to be a successful one for the 83-year-old. He had invested roughly $100 million in Lyft LYFT, +1.49% in 2015 at a valuation of $2.5 billion, and later added $50 million at the same valuation. The IPO valued Lyft at $24 billion, or $72 a share, though he likely sold it for a bit less than that.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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