Published on modified
(Boursier.com) — The online brokerage application robinhood soared 24.88% to $10.69 on Wall Street on Friday, a surge linked to the revelation that Sam Bankman-Fried, managing director of the crypto-asset trading platform FTXhas acquired a 7.6% stake in the capital of Robinhood.
According to a document filed Thursday evening with the SEC, the policeman of the American Stock Exchange, the company Emergent Fidelity Technologies, of which Sam Bankman-Fried is the boss and the main shareholder, acquired this stake of 7.6% for an amount of 648 million dollars.
Founded in May 2019, and based in Nassau, Bahamas, FTX does not currently have a commercial presence in the United States, but is one of the largest global platforms cryptocurrency trading company, rival of Coinbase and of Binance.
Its boss and co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried will have benefited from the fall of the Robinhood share, which has been evolving in recent days at its historic lows, down more than 75% compared to its introductory price last July, to $38.
A purely financial investment, or more if you like?
In the stock filing, Emergent Fidelity Technologies said it acquired these securities on the belief that they “represent an attractive investment” and clarified that it intends to manage this stake as a financial investment, and “does not intend at this stage to act to change or influence the control” of Robinhood.
However, the purchaser reserves the right to “engage in discussions with management from time to time” and added that he may buy other titles in the future, as well that exploring “options to increase shareholder valuethrough, among other things, alternative strategies or operational or governance initiatives” of the online broker.
At the end of April, Robinhood published disappointing accounts for the 1st quarter of 2022, weighed down by the stock market turbulence which caused the number of active users to drop. The firm recorded an adjusted net loss of $392 million, for revenues of $299 million, down 15% compared to the same period of 2021.