Celsius’s New CEO Aims for Stability and Boring Culture to Revive Bankrupt Company

• Celsius’s interim CEO has introduced a new strategy that focuses on stability and “boringness” to navigate through bankruptcy.
• Ferraro aims to transform the “unoptimized” work culture Celsius had.
• Despite facing challenges from the SEC, Celsius is progressing toward completing a new bankruptcy plan.

Celsius’s interim Chief Executive Officer, Chris Ferraro, started implementing a different strategy than the former CEO, and the strategy made the bankrupt lender “as boring as possible,” according to Bloomberg.

The reports stated that with Ferraro in charge, Celsius began hosting regular staff meetings and highlighting sticking to the budget. The CEO said the point was to “make this place normal, boring, stable.” Ferraro said, “It’s OK to be boring, we’re in bankruptcy, we should tone it down.”

Before joining Celsius, Ferraro worked in traditional finance at JPMorgan Chase & Co and an affiliate of Cerberus Capital Management. Ferraro mentioned that before Celsius went bankrupt, the work culture and environment had “a lot of yelling, a lot of kind of poking at each other, disrupting each other.” Compared to his career background, he deemed the culture unoptimized.

The interim CEO believes that by changing the work culture, he would foster a new culture that would hold Celsius managers accountable and allow the company to focus on repaying customers. Bloomberg shared that Celsius is now close to completing a new bankruptcy plan that would repay the customers a portion of their money. Ferraro addressed the customers’ need and said, “These folks need the liquidity.”

Celsius is reportedly on track to be the first bankrupt crypto company to relaunch. Key stakeholders were supporting the company’s restructuring plan. Moreover, Celsius proposed to engage Coinbase as a distribution agent to help repay international customers. A proposal that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) objected to.

Bloomberg added that although the restructuring plan is facing some difficulties from the SEC, the finish line is near. A federal judge is scheduled to consider approving Celsius’s plan on October 2, and if approved, Celsius would commence repaying customers before the end of 2023.