Sam Bankman-Fried’s holding company files for bankruptcy

Emergent Fidelity Technologies, a Sam Bankman-Fried holding company based in Antigua and Barbuda, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

According to court records filed on Feb. 3, Emergent Fidelity Technologies submitted a voluntary petition to declare bankruptcy under a Chapter 11 filing in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The company was already the target of a lawsuit filed by crypto lending firm BlockFi in November 2022 regarding the status of roughly 55 million shares of Robinhood.

The Robinhood shares — worth more than $590 million at the time of publication — have been a point of contention among parties, including BlockFi, FTX creditor Yonathan Ben Shimon and Bankman-Fried himself. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Jan. 6 that it had seized the shares and roughly $20 million in U.S. dollars as part of the case against FTX and its executives.

Emergent Fidelity Technologies claimed ownership of the shares and the $20 million as its “only known assets,” previously held by brokerage firm Marex Capital Markets before the DOJ seizure. According to a declaration by Angela Barkhouse, one of the joint provisional liquidators in the case, Emergent Fidelity Technologies filed for Chapter 11 in the same court as FTX to pursue a “form of joint administration” between the two bankruptcies.

“The [joint provisional liquidators’] duties are to the debtor’s creditors, whoever those creditors may be,” said Barkhouse. “Given the many parties claiming to be creditors or outright owners of the [Robinhood shares] in proceedings in the U.S., the JPLs believe that Chapter 11 protection is the only practical way to empower the debtor to defend itself, the assets, and its creditors’ interests in the U.S.”

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According to Barkhouse, Bankman-Fried owns 90% of the firm, with FTX co-founder Gary Wang owning the remaining 10%. Bankman-Fried’s criminal trial is scheduled to begin in October, while Wang has already pled guilty to fraud charges.