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A pedestrian is reflected in the window of a Telus store while using a mobile phone in Ottawa February 11, 2011.© Chris Wattie / Reuters/Reuters

Mason Capital seems to have some talented traders working for it.

If the New York-based hedge fund has really been reducing its stake in Telus Corp. as much as the Canadian company believes (and there are signs it could be bailing out even more in recent days), it's been doing a good job of getting out of a tough position without moving the market too much.

Mason is the fund that took a huge stake in Telus, with both long and short positions, then campaigned to stop Telus's planned consolidation of its dual-class shares into one. Mason bought the voting shares of Telus that have historically traded at a premium, and shorted a big chunk of non-voting stock, betting that if the consolidation failed the spread between the two would widen.

However, Telus won the vote to consolidate the shares in October, so Mason's play was foiled. The focus then turned to: How would Mason unwind its trade, getting out of such huge positions without moving the market so much as to destroy any profits? Mason never tipped its hand on how it planned to exit when the time came, but always suggested it had a method mapped out. It appears to be working.

Telus said Friday that the percentage of its voting shares owned by non-Canadians dropped to 15 per cent as of Nov. 16, which is in line with historical norms and way below the 33 per cent that the company saw when Mason was a big owner of almost 19 per cent of the class. It could be that every other non-Canadian investor in Telus has bailed out, or more likely, it's a signal that Mason is reducing its holdings.

That's what Telus thinks. "Telus believes Mason Capital has materially reduced both its long and short positions in the company," the company said, based on numbers to Nov. 16.

Given the huge trading in Telus the past two days, there's a good chance that Mason has now even further cut its positions from where they were mid-month.

Almost 16 million voting shares have traded on Friday, on top of 12.6 million Thursday, compared to the average daily volume of about 1.5 million over the past year. Almost 1.3 million non-voting shares traded Thursday; an above average day as well but nothing compared to the trading in the voting shares.

Mason has declined to comment and has yet to disclose a material shift in its position. But assuming that the fund is exiting, and has done most of its selling and short-covering since the vote on the consolidation, Mason's exit has come with surprisingly little market movement.

Big selling of voting shares should push the price down, and big buying of non-voting shares to cover short positions should drive the price of those up. That should compress the gap between the two classes of shares. If Mason really moved the market and pushed the price of the non-voters above the voters, it would start to cost money.

But in the stretch between the vote and Nov. 16, when Telus said it measured its numbers on foreign ownership, the gap only closed totally on one occasion, and judging by volume numbers, it's unlikely that was the day that Mason moved a lot of stock.

Otherwise, the voting shares have still fetched more than the non-voters. It's impossible to tell whether Mason made any money, without knowing where it entered the trade and how much it spent on lawyers and other costs in its fight with Telus. But if Mason has indeed unwound a lot of its position, it has clearly done so without big losses.

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