The Oakmark Funds has sold its stake in Dell. The sell-off followed Blackstone withdrawing from the bidding process. 

Below is an excerpt from an official statement released by Oakmark:

We believed Blackstone had an information advantage compared to other potential bidders because the former head of Dell’s mergers and acquisitions team works at Blackstone. Our confidence in Dell’s value was based on the large amount of capital that the company had deployed for acquisitions outside its legacy PC business.

Our numbers suggested Dell should be worth a premium to the $13.65 offer from management, but then a potential acquirer with access to non-public information decided to end its quest to acquire Dell at a higher price. Since they had information we didn’t, we believed it was prudent to assume they might be right. So we sold our stock and will put the proceeds into other stocks that we are more confident are undervalued.

Oakmark reportedly owned about 1.6 per cent of Dell shares, according to a Bloomberg report.