The CEO of Robinhood during a congressional hearing on last month's Wall Street chaos apologized for restricting GameStop trading, calling what occurred "unacceptable."
Vlad Tenev, CEO of the trading app, offered his apology during a House Financial Services Committee hearing Thursday that examined the events surrounding Reddit users last month sending GameStop stock, which had been heavily shorted by hedge funds, soaring. On Jan. 28, Robinhood temporarily limited trading of stock from GameStop and other companies, citing "recent volatility," a decision that drew heavy criticism and scrutiny from lawmakers.
"Despite the unprecedented market conditions in January, at the end of the day, what happened is unacceptable to us," Tenev said. "To our customers, I'm sorry, and I apologize. Please know that we are doing everything we can to make sure this won't happen again."
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
He also insisted "Robinhood Securities played this by the books," and "played it basically the only way" they could.
Explaining further, Tenev said the "temporary restrictions" were put into place "in an effort to meet increased regulatory deposit requirements, not to help hedge funds." Elsewhere in the hearing, he told lawmakers the company needed to limit the trading "until additional capital came in that allowed us to relax the restrictions," adding that there were "limited options" during what he called a "one in 3.5 million occurrence event," but that Robinhood "owns what happened."
But The New York Times writes that it seemed Tenev's responses "failed to satisfy the members of the committee" during the hearing, with Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) at one point saying "I don't blame customers for feeling treated unfairly." Brendan Morrow
-
Epstein files: Maxwell courts a pardonFeature A new prison transcript shows Ghislaine Maxwell praising Trump as 'a gentleman' while denying his involvement in the Epstein scandal
-
Pentagon readies military deployment in ChicagoFeature The Pentagon is preparing to deploy thousands of Illinois National Guard members to Chicago after Trump threatened to send troops into other major cities
-
Trump: Taking over the private sector?Feature Donald Trump has secured a 10% stake in Intel using funds from the Biden-era CHIPS Act
-
New York court tosses Trump's $500M fraud fineSpeed Read A divided appeals court threw out a hefty penalty against President Trump for fraudulently inflating his wealth
-
Trump said to seek government stake in IntelSpeed Read The president and Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reportedly discussed the proposal at a recent meeting
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to ChinaSpeed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with DisneySpeed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B dealSpeed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance mergerSpeed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profitsSpeed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new highSpeed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year
