Tesla’s (TSLA) largest outside holder increased its stake by 25% ahead of the Tesla-SolarCity merger

Several top institutional holders increased their stake in Tesla (TSLA) over the last quarter, which is particularly significant ahead of the Tesla-SolarCity merger vote. Interestingly, one of the biggest holders of both companies, Fidelity, divested from SolarCity (SCTY) during the second quarter, but increased its stake in Tesla by 25 percent to 20.36 million shares worth $4.4 billion.

While the major ownerships in Tesla and SolarCity are important ahead of the merger vote, it wouldn’t be fair to attribute the change to the proposed acquisition of SolarCity since it was announced only on June 21 and the changes in ownership cover the entire quarter ended on June 30.

Reuters listed some other noteworthy changes in Tesla (TSLA) holders:

“Tesla shares were added to other portfolios during the second quarter, including those of hedge funds Alyeska Investment Group, which took a new 100,000 share position, and Blue Ridge Capital, which took a new 191,237 share position.

Gilder Gagnon Howe & Co of New York boosted its stake in Tesla by 24 percent to 808,661 shares.”

SolarCity’s board approved the $2.6 billion all-stock transaction earlier this month and it is now subject to an upcoming shareholders vote and pending SEC approval.

Here are the current top institutional TSLA holders:

Last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that he was convinced that investors will approve the merger. He himself will recuse from voting his shares in each company, which represent a ~22% stake in each company, but he mentioned talking to the companies’ major investors and feeling confident they will approve the proposal.