Short selling specialist Hindenburg Research has revealed it has taken out a wager against Carl Icahn's Icahn Enterprises after alleging that the business has inflated the value of its investments and is running a “Ponzi-like economic structure”, according to a report by the New York Post.

Short selling specialist Hindenburg Research has revealed it has taken out a wager against Carl Icahn's Icahn Enterprises (IEP) after alleging that the business has inflated the value of its investments and is running a “Ponzi-like economic structure”, according to a report by the New York Post.

Hindenburg Research – whose other recent targets include Indian billionaire Gautam Adani and electric-car company Nikola – said it has “uncovered clear evidence” of inflated valuations for some of the holding company’s assets.

In a report, the short-seller highlighted that the current dividend yield for Icahn’s firm is 15%, which it said “is entirely unsupported by IEP’s cash flow and investment performance, which has been negative for years.”

Hindenburg also claimed that despite lagging performance, IEP has kept raising its dividend to lure retail investors.

“In brief, Icahn has been using money taken in from new investors to pay out dividends to old investors,” Hindenburg said in its report. “Such Ponzi-like economic structures are sustainable only to the extent that new money is willing to risk being the last one ‘holding the bag.’”