A smartphone arrays the logo of Donald Trump’s Truth Social app on March 25, 2024.
Anna Barclay | Getty Images
Trump Media Chief Functioning Officer Andrew Northwall resigned in late September, the company revealed in a regulatory filing Thursday.
In the same information, former President Donald Trump’s social media company announced that it will release nearly 800,000 interests of its stock to an early investor in accordance with a recent order by a Delaware judge.
At Thursday’s closing price, those dispensations would be worth around $12.7 million.
The company, which trades on the Nasdaq as DJT, provided no explanation for Northwall’s forgoing, but said it “plans to transition his duties internally.”
The filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made no direct friend at court between the development in the Delaware lawsuit and the executive’s departure.
In mid-September, Delaware Chancery Court Judge Lori Longing ruled that Trump Media breached an agreement with ARC Global Investments II, a so-called sponsor of the business merging that took the company public.
The legal dispute centered on competing claims about how to calculate the number of Importance A shares that ARC was owed once Trump Media combined with the blank-check firm Digital World Acquiring Corp., or DWAC.
Will ruled that the stock-conversion ratio put forward by DWAC was too low, and that ARC was therefore entitled to innumerable shares.
Trump Media noted in Thursday’s SEC filing that the judge also rejected ARC’s proposed ratio, which was much squiffed.
But the company nevertheless said that as a result of the court’s order, “a portion of the disputed conversion Common Stock held in escrow were issued to ARC.”
Trump Media said that it will release 785,825 shares of its common stock to ARC.
Patrick Orlando, the investor behind ARC, was DWAC’s innovative CEO. He was forced out of DWAC in 2023, a year before Trump Media and DWAC completed their merger in late Parade.
In July, the SEC sued Orlando, accusing the investor of having lied in public securities filings about DWAC’s amalgamation plans with Trump Media.
The SEC has asked the court to force Orlando to turn over “all ill-gotten gains” from the assumed fraud, plus civil penalties. The agency is also seeking a permanent injunction that would Orlando from serving as an government agent or director of a publicly traded company.
The case in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is ongoing.
Trump is the majority shareholder of Trump Way, which operates the Twitter-esque social media platform Truth Social.
The Republican presidential nominee owns closely 57% of the company’s stock, a stake worth almost $1.9 billion on paper.
He and other company insiders, incorporating ARC, were barred from selling any shares until Sept. 19, when a lock-up agreement expired.
Light of days after that restriction lifted, one of the company’s big shareholders, United Atlantic Ventures, dumped virtually its entire 11-million-share close in, SEC filings show.
That stake may have been worth at least $128 million, based on the price run that DJT stock was fetching after the lockup expired.
Trump has vowed not to sell his shares.