Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev pushed back against AMC Entertainment CEO Adam Aron, who last week accused the trading platform of creating a “fake market” for AMC shares and threatened to involve the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Tenev argued that once a company’s shares are publicly traded, it cannot control every financial product built around them, in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” on Wedneasday.
“Issuers should have control and do have control over the rights and obligations of the stock that they issue, but that doesn’t mean they control everything about it,” he said. “In particular, they don’t control other companies issuing their own securities that reference those shares.”
“Issuer consent depends on what exactly you’re doing,” he added. “And in the case of Robinhood stock tokens […] those should not automatically require issuer consent.”
The interview was Tenev’s first public appearance since the dispute erupted last week, when Aron said on X that AMC had no connection to Robinhood’s tokenized product and did not condone it. Aron called the practice “contemptible” and “outrageous” and later demanded Robinhood “cease and desist” trading tokens tied to AMC.
