It is the darling of stock marketers, and its founders are not afraid of anything. Despite the controversy surrounding its business, the commission-free brokerage app Robinhood (“Robin Hood”) is about to launch on Wall Street. The company plans to sell its shares between 38 and 42 dollars (32 and 36 euros), she detailed in a document transmitted Monday, July 19 to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American policeman of the markets. It intends to raise up to $ 2.3 billion from investors – which would make it the fifth largest IPO of the year in the United States – and could be valued around $ 35 billion.
The app did not disclose the exact timing of this introduction. But according to Bloomberg, the first trading on the Nasdaq could begin on July 29. On Saturday July 24, the two founders of Robinhood, Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, as well as several of its executives, will hold an online “road-show” for investors. 20% to 35% of the actions put up for sale will be reserved for its 18 million users.
Born in 2013 with the promise of “Democratize finance” By eliminating commissions on share purchases and sales, Robinhood experienced spectacular growth during the first lockdown, in the first half of 2020. In particular among those in their thirties who have free time to go on the stock market, and who appreciate its inspired smartphone application video game codes.
Controversial practices
This financial troublemaker was particularly talked about during the speculative frenzy around the chain of video game stores GameStop, at the beginning of the year. Thousands of stock marketers had then agreed on the Reddit discussion forum to take off the actions of GameStop, including Robinhood. They raised them so high that hedge funds betting on the collapse of stores went bankrupt. But in the process, Robinhood drew the wrath of small carriers when it limited transactions on GameStop titles.
Since then, the broker has accumulated difficulties and legal disputes. At the end of June, the American Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) fined him $ 70 million, the biggest penalty ever demanded by this gendarme. He accuses him of having transmitted misleading information to millions of customers, victims of an outage in March 2020. In December, the SEC had already fined him $ 65 million for lack of user information.
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