Sam Bankman-Fried, the billionaire, Founder and CEO of crypto exchange FTX, has taken a 7.6 percent stake in the American online broker, Robinhood, a regulatory filing on Thursday unveiled.
He purchased Robinhood shares worth a total of $648 million at an average price of $11.52. According to the discloser, he started the purchase in mid-March and continued through until last Wednesday.
Additionally, he pointed out that his position as the commission-free broker might change but did not detail if he is open to buying more shares.
Falling Robinhood Shares
Bankman-Fried started to hoard Robinhood shares when it lost a significant portion of its value. The online stock trading platform went public last year in July with a lot of bells and whistles but soon faced investors’ disinterest as the retail trading frenzy started to fade.
The latest disclosure by the CEO of FTX has given another lifeline to Robinhood shares as stock prices jumped by around 25 percent in after-hours trading.
Despite his significant stake in Robinhood, Bankman-Fried confirmed that he has no intention of taking over the control of the online brokerage. The founders of Robinhood currently have 64 percent of the outstanding voting shares.
However, Bankman-Fried might consider pushing for changes in the online trading platform, which he described as “strategic alternatives or operational or management initiatives.”
Interestingly, FTX and Robinhood are now coinciding with each other's operational areas. Robinhood, which disrupted the retail trading industry with the commission-free model, is providing crypto trading and expanding its offerings within the asset class. The broker even purchased a crypto company in the United Kingdom recently to accelerate its push into the country.
Moreover, the US arm of FTX is going to launch a stock trading platform and has already opened a waitlist in February.
Robinhood recently decided to lay off 9 percent of its staff in a move that its CEO, Vlad Tenev described as removing “duplicate roles and job functions.”
