Ripple CEO Rules Out IPO Amid ‘Hostile’ SEC Environment

Ripple had considered going public outside the United States due to the “hostile” stance of the SEC, but has postponed these plans. This was stated by the fintech company’s CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, in Davos.

LFG! 2024 is going to be big. https://t.co/3CcCQNo4D9

— Brad Garlinghouse (@bgarlinghouse) January 16, 2024

“Trying to go for an IPO with a ‘hostile’ regulator that has to approve your S-1 — that doesn’t sound like much fun to me. Coinbase got their form approved, and then the SEC sued them for actions that were reflected in their filings,” Garlinghouse explained.

According to the executive, an IPO is not currently a priority.

“We have looked at other jurisdictions with clear ‘rules of the road‘. […] Ripple doesn’t need to raise capital. […] We are keeping this option open and will reassess it after the SEC’s composition changes,” the CEO explained.

Garlinghouse described the current SEC Chairman, Gary Gensler, as a “political liability” and characterized a future leadership change at the agency as a “good scenario for the American people.”

According to the executive, Ripple has focused on stock buybacks. To date, the company has spent over $1 billion on these efforts, he added.

“Shareholder liquidity is important to me. We have investors who first invested in Ripple in 2012,” he noted.

In January, it was revealed that the fintech company will allocate $285 million to buy back shares from early investors, valuing the company at $11.3 billion.

Earlier this year, Garlinghouse, commenting on the hack of the SEC’s X account, suggested that the regulator should investigate “itself.”

On January 11, the Commission’s lawyers filed a motion demanding that Ripple disclose financial statements for the period from 2022 to 2023, as well as “contracts post-complaint governing institutional sales.”

Ripple requested additional time — until January 19 — to respond to the regulator’s motion to compel.

Back in December 2020, the SEC filed a lawsuit against the California-based company.

The agency claimed that the firm had sold unregistered securities in the form of XRP worth approximately $1.39 billion over seven years.

On July 13, 2023, the company achieved a partial victory in the case. Judge Torres ruled that programmatic sales and other distributions of tokens do not constitute investment contracts. However, the sale of XRP to institutional participants violated securities laws.

In October, the SEC withdrew its lawsuit against Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and CEO Brad Garlinghouse, which accused them of violating securities laws.