Nik Storonsky, founder and CEO of Revolut, has reportedly cashed in a portion of his stake in his fintech worth up to $300 million during a secondary share sale last month.
Sky News was first to report that Storonsky’s shareholdings made up between 40% and 60% of the stock sold in the roughly $500 million transaction. The share sale was aimed at providing liquidity for Revolut’s employees by allowing them to cash in their shares.
U.S.-based investors Coatue, D1 Capital Partners and Tiger Global led the round, which valued the company at $45 billion, cementing its status as Europe’s most valuable startup. Just three years ago, Revolut was valued at $33 billion in a funding round the included SoftBank and Tiger Global.
Revolut has signaled that its aiming to go public in the near future, but it reportedly favors the Nasdaq in New York over the London Stock Exchange. In response, the U.K. Treasury is due to have discussions with Revolut in the autumn in a bid to convince it to choose London as the venue of its listing.
Revolut is one of the standard bearers of the fintech companies that emerged in the U.K. over the past decade, offering financial services without having to setup a network of physical branches.
Revolut was cofounded by Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko in 2015 as a digital payments and money transfer business. The pair had both worked for various investment banks before launching their venture at the Level39 tech accelerator in Canary Wharf.
Today, their creation has grown to offer a range of banking services through its app, and it also turned them both into billionaires. Yatsenko continues to serve as Revolut’s chief technology officer.
Their London-based firm said it made a pretax profit of £438 million in 2023 on strong user growth and interest rate income. Revolut had reported a pretax loss of £25 million in 2022. The firm says its revenue almost doubled to £1.8 billion last year, and it now has 45 million customers across 38 countries.
After a three-year wait, regulators finally granted Revolut a banking license in July that will boost its chances of becoming regulated as a bank in other markets such as the U.S. Revolut already has a European banking license from authorities in Lithuania.
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