How Charlotte landed Robinhood expansion despite GameStop controversy

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Earlier this year, Silicon Valley online trading platform Robinhood Markets Inc. had nearly finalized its selection on where to add hundreds of new jobs: Charlotte.

Then, overnight, the fintech company was thrown in the center of a stock-market frenzy. The company temporarily restricted trades of certain stocks after retail traders, on a Reddit forum, decided to band together and invest in stocks — mostly notably GameStop — shorted by institutional investors. That spurred a huge surge in pricing for GameStop and big losses for hedge funds and others that had bet against those stocks.

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Tariq Bokhari, founder of the Carolina Fintech Hub and a Charlotte City Council member, said he had been working through his organization and the city to bring Robinhood to town. As the company was getting close to a deal to bring nearly 400 jobs to the Queen City, suddenly, focus shifted to trying to figure out what the GameStop chaos and controversy surrounding Robinhood could mean for the $12 million local investment on the table.

“(Everyone was asking), what does this mean? Will it fall apart?” Bokhari said. “I said, ‘No one knows what’s going to happen, but if I’m going to make a bet, I’d go all in on: this management team is strong and they just went out and raised $3 billion overnight.’”

Ultimately, the upheaval did slow the local Robinhood deal a bit, but nothing else about it — such as number of jobs or amount of investment — changed, he said.

Both Bokhari and an economic development executive at the city credit a previous connection made with a company representative with the latest win. Read the full story here for more on how it played out.