Who is Ryan Cohen? Bed Bath & Beyond tycoon left to answer for 'pump and dump' scheme after Gustavo Arnal's death
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK: Bed Bath and Beyond's CFO, Gustavo Arnal, committed suicide on Friday, September 2, amidst the mounting losses that the company had been suffering. With prior experience in companies like Avon, Walgreens, and Procter & Gamble, Arnal joined this crumbling company in 2020 itself. His untimely death has revealed the alleged pump and dump scheme and a billionaire investor is being blamed for it.
Ryan Cohen, a billionaire, is now accused of being the curator of this operation to artificially inflate the price of the retail store company's stock before cashing out. Pump and dump is a form of security fraud that peaks the price of owned stocks through false and misleading positive statements, all for selling the cheap owning at a higher price. According to a lawsuit, the billionaire in his mid-30s approached Arnal to release "materially misleading statements and omissions" about the company's financial position, before they allegedly ashed out and caused the price to plummet, states Daily Mail.
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The shareholders suffered a loss of around $1.2 billion after this scheme. But it was all put to rest along with Arnal after he jumped from the famous 'Jenga' building in New York, known for its oddly stacked houses. Arnal took this drastic step days after the retailer announced that it was laying off 20 percent of its corporate and supply chain workforce. As a result of the sky-rocketing inflation, the company also decided to shut down 150 stores nationwide. The company has struggled with some serious losses due to rising inflation, so much so that CEO Mark Tritton was fired back in June following a 25 percent plunge in sales in the first quarter.
Who is Ryan Cohen?
Ryan Cohen, who is being accused of the pump and dump scheme, is an American entrepreneur and businessman. He is best known for founding 'Chewy', which was an e-commerce company that was acquired by PetSmart for $3.35 billion in 2017. Born in Montreal, he is another success story who did not attend college. According to Celebrity Net Worth, his net worth is $1 billion and he reportedly owns a $500 million stake in Apple. He is currently the chairman of GameStop. In September 2020, Cohen disclosed a nearly 10 percent stake in GameStop that made him the company's biggest individual investor.
He is now being accused of planning a controlled growth and loss of the company's stock prices, which is essentially a part of the abovementioned sketchy scheme. The lawsuit that drags Cohen into the picture says, "With control over a significant portion of the public float, Cohen would essentially act as a price support for the stock while Gustavo would act in a similar capacity by controlling the sale of shares by Insiders. Under this arrangement, defendants would profit handsomely from the rise in price and could coordinate their selling of shares to optimize their returns." As per the lawsuit, getting call control on more than 1.6 million shares with a strike price between $60 and $80 was a "classic attempt to spark a gamma squeeze, in exchange for Gustavo’s assurance that Insiders would not flood … the market with the stock."
