Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang’s holding firm, Emergent Fidelity Technologies, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware. The company is headquartered in Antigua and Barbuda and had just $20.7 million in cash and no other assets. The filing was made late on Friday and liquidator Angela Barkhouse believes that Chapter 11 protection is the only way to protect the company, its assets, and its creditors’ interests in the US.
The company had recently secured a loan from Alameda, which was used to acquire almost 56 million shares of the retail trading app Robinhood. These shares were the subject of various claims, including from Bankman-Fried, creditor Yonathan Ben Shimon, and the FTX-linked bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi. The US Department of Justice seized the shares at the start of January, currently worth almost $600 million, and said that Bankman-Fried had defrauded FTX customers by misappropriating their funds for his personal use.
Bankruptcy filings are a common occurrence, but the filing of Emergent Fidelity Technologies is particularly notable due to the involvement of Bankman-Fried and the claims for the Robinhood shares. It remains to be seen how the case will be resolved and what the outcome will be for the company and its creditors.
