Gill became one of the public faces of the GameStop rally that has been a Wall Street obsession this year. The stock’s stratospheric rise appeared to pit scrappy individual investors against sophisticated hedge funds who were heavily shorting the troubled mall retailer. Some funds lost billions of dollars covering their positions as GameStop shares surged more than 1700 per cent during one stretch in January.
Congressional testimony
The GameStop rally has also attracted the attention of politicians, and Gill is scheduled to testify on Thursday before the House Financial Services Committee, along with executives from trading platform Robinhood Markets, hedge fund Citadel, investment firm Melvin Capital Management and Reddit.
In prepared testimony for his Congressional appearance, provided in advance by his lawyer in response to questions about the lawsuit, Gill said his previous work in the financial industry never included trading securities or advising clients. He also denied trying to artificially pump up GameStop shares and said he truly believed in the company’s future potential.
“I did not solicit anyone to buy or sell the stock for my own profit,” Gill plans to testify. “I did not belong to any groups trying to create movements in the stock price. I never had a financial relationship with any hedge fund. I had no information about GameStop except what was public. I did not know any people inside the company, and I never spoke to any insider.”
‘Millionaires’ in December
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It’s unclear how much money Gill made from his GameStop shares, though he said in his testimony that he and his family were “millionaires” when the stock reached $US20 in December, far below the heights it would reach a month later. Those gains have largely evaporated in recent weeks, with the stock trading around $US47 on Wednesday afternoon.
The lawsuit claims Gill, who has been written about extensively by Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and others, was far from being an amateur stock picker. Rather, he is a Chartered Financial Analyst who holds multiple broker licenses and was previously employed by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. The lawsuit also named Mass Mutual and a brokerage subsidiary of the company as defendants, saying they had an obligation to supervise Gill’s activities in the market.
A spokeswoman for Mass Mutual said the company was reviewing the matter and had no comment.
“In order to motivate amateur traders, Gill fashioned himself as a kind of Robin Hood and characterised securities professionals as villians,” the lawsuit said. “Gill, however, is no amateur. For many years, he actively worked as a professional in the investment and financial industries.”
The case is Iovin v Gill, 21-cv-10264, U.S. District Court District, District of Massachusetts (Springfield).
Bloomberg
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