Bankman-Fried Denied Reports of FTX-Robinhood Merger, Acquisition

The CEO of crypto exchange platform FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, denied the rumor generated by the Bloomberg report that mentioned FTX is seeking opportunities to buy the popular trading platform Robinhood Markets. He said that the company isn’t going for any active mergers and acquisitions with the trading app.

In this recent article, Bloomberg cites “people with knowledge of the matter” and reported that FTX is having internal discussions on ways to acquire Robinhood, although, the latter has not received any formal takeover approach from FTX.

Share prices of Robinhood skyrocketed by 18% following this article’s release on June 27, which halted the trading at 15:10 EDT and later resumed at 15:15, wherein the stock maintained its gain, rising to 14% by the end of the day. However, after Bankman-Fried dismissed the rumor, the share prices dropped by 4.5%.

In an emailed statement to MarketWatch, Bankman-Fried mentioned, “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 Vlad and his team have built. That being said there are no active M&A conversations with Robinhood.” The statement was sent on June 28.

The Bloomberg article also reported that last month FTX CEO bought a 7.6% stake in Robinhood worth $648 million, citing “sources close to the matter.”

In other related news, recently, Bankman-Fried’s companies signed deals to bail out small players in the crypto market. Further, FTX has agreed to provide a $250 million revolving credit facility to crypto lender BlockFi. Also, Bankman-Fried’s quantitative trading firm, Alameda, committed to financing $500 million to a crypto brokerage platform, Voyager Digital.