A host of big-name hedge fund managers have cashed in on Elon Musk's "forced" $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, with the likes of Carl Icahn, Ken Griffin, Israel Englander and Daniel Loeb all benefitting from an "easy trade" on the deal, according to a report by Forbes.

The report cites Icahn as saying that "you didn’t have to be a genius" to work out that the acquisition would finally complete after Musk attempted at one point to walk away from the deal. Speaking at a recent Forbes summit, Icahn also said he would have have considered a proxy fight if the deal had failed.

According to his Q3, SEC 13-F filing, Icahn owned 12.5 million Twitter shares as of 30 September, which he reportedly acquired at an average price $35 per share. With the deal closing at $54.20 per share on 28 October, that equates to a $240 million net profit.

Forbes has identified Forbes 13 hedge funds in all that spent upwards of $100 million adding to their Twitter stakes between the end of the Q1 and end of the Q3 this year, with the list of big winners including Hong Kong-based Segantii Capital Management, founded by British investor Simon Sadler, and Farallon Capital, the San Francisco-based firm founded by Thomas Steyer in 1986 and now run by Andrew Spokes.