Robinhood Shares Spike on Report FTX May Be Seeking to Acquire It

Shares of no-commission trading platform Robinhood (HOOD) were rising about 16% and trading was briefly halted after Bloomberg reported that crypto exchange FTX was looking into a possible deal to acquire the company, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

No formal offer has been made yet and FTX could decide not to go forward with any plans, according to the report.
In May, an SEC filing revealed that FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried had purchased a 7.6% stake in Robinhood through an Antiguan firm called Emergent Fidelity Technologies Ltd.
"We are excited about Robinhood's business prospects and potential ways we could partner with them, and I have always been impressed by the business that [Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev] and his team have built," wrote Bankman-Fried in a statement emailed to CoinDesk. "That being said, there are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood."
On Monday morning, Goldman Sachs upgraded Robinhood shares from sell to neutral in a report that also downgraded Coinbase (COIN) shares due to the sharp decline in crypto prices and subsequent trading activity.
Shares of Robinhood are down 47% this year. They are down roughly 75% from their IPO level last July.
Commissions from cryptocurrency trading have become a growing part of Robinhood’s business.

UPDATE (June 27, 20:07 UTC): Added emailed statement from Sam Bankman-Fried.

DISCLOSURE

Please note that our privacy policy, terms of use, cookies, and do not sell my personal information has been updated.

The leader in news and information on cryptocurrency, digital assets and the future of money, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. As part of their compensation, certain CoinDesk employees, including editorial employees, may receive exposure to DCG equity in the form of stock appreciation rights, which vest over a multi-year period. CoinDesk journalists are not allowed to purchase stock outright in DCG.

Nelson Wang

Nelson Wang was CoinDesk's news editor for the East Coast. He holds BTC and ETH above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000.

Follow @NelWang on Twitter

Learn more about Consensus 2024, CoinDesk’s longest-running and most influential event that brings together all sides of crypto, blockchain and Web3. Head to consensus.coindesk.com to register and buy your pass now.