The Volkswagen short squeeze of October 2008 is widely recognized by financial historians as the largest and most dramatic short squeeze in global market history. During the global financial crisis, Porsche surprised institutional short sellers by revealing it had quietly acquired massive control over Volkswagen's voting shares through complex financial derivatives. With the vast majority of shares locked up and unavailable for open trading, short sellers scrambled to cover positions, temporarily driving Volkswagen to become the most valuable publicly traded company in the world and inflicting tens of billions of dollars in losses on hedge funds.