Archegos Capital, a private investment firm, was behind billions of dollars worth of share sales that captivated Wall Street on Friday — a fire sale that has left traders scrambling to calculate how much more it has to offload, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The fund, which had large exposures to ViacomCBS and several Chinese technology stocks, was hit hard after shares of the US media group began to tumble on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The declines prompted a margin call from one of Archegos’ prime brokers, triggering similar demands for cash from other banks, said people familiar with the matter. Traders buying the large blocks of stock were told the share sales had been prompted by a “forced deleveraging” by a fund.