Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Says Government Regulation Good for Business

Robinhood Markets CEO Vlad Tenev reportedly said Tuesday (Feb. 25) that government regulation is good for the company’s business.

Speaking with Bloomberg Television, Tenev added that the Robinhood knows how to operate in a regulated arena.

“I think customers want to know that their assets are safe and that someone is watching over the companies that are providing financial services to them and holding them accountable,” Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Tenev’s comments came a day after Robinhood said that after receiving a Wells Notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last year, which is typically seen as a warning of impending enforcement action, the company got a letter from the SEC saying that the commission concluded its investigation and had no plans to follow up with enforcement action.

“We applaud the staff’s decision to close this investigation with no action,” Robinhood Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallagher said in a Monday (Feb. 24) press release. “Let me be crystal clear. This investigation never should have been opened. Robinhood Crypto always has and will always respect federal securities laws and never allowed transactions in securities. As we explained to the SEC, any case against Robinhood Crypto would have failed.”

It was reported in August that Robinhood submitted a response to an SEC Wells Notice that it received in May and that related to its cryptocurrency business.

When the company received the Wells Notice in May, Gallagher said in a blog post that Robinhood was “disappointed” that the agency had decided to issue the notice because the company had tried to work with the agency for years to gain regulatory clarity.

“We firmly believe that the assets listed on our platform are not securities and we look forward to engaging with the SEC to make clear just how weak any case against Robinhood Crypto would be on both the facts and the law,” Gallagher said in the post.

In a separate case, the SEC said in January that two Robinhood broker-dealers — Robinhood Securities and Robinhood Financial — agreed to pay $45 million in combined civil penalties to settle charges that they failed to observe a “broad array” of regulatory requirements.

Reached by PYMNTS at the time, the company provided an emailed statement saying that it was “pleased to resolve these matters.”