Quotes: Key quotes from the GameStop testimonies: 'I'm not a cat'

Citadel Income Fund

18/02/2021 18:31

(Raw quotes from witnesses, victims and officials in a breaking
news situation)
 (Adds quotes from Tenev, Griffin)
    Feb 18 (Reuters) - At a grilling by lawmakers over the
frenzied trading in retailer GameStop  GME.N , Keith Gill, a
YouTube streamer known as Roaring Kitty, hedge fund managers and
the head of Robinhood and Reddit defended their actions. 
    Those testifying were Robinhood CEO Vlad  Tenev, Melvin
Capital CEO Gabriel  Plotkin, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin and Reddit
CEO Steve Huffman.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2KN3PN
    Here are the testimonies https://docs.house.gov/Committee/Calendar/ByEvent.aspx?EventID=111207
 of the players involved and a link https://www.reuters.com/article/retail-trading-congress-profiles/the-wall-street-players-at-the-gamestop-hearing-idUSL1N2KK0EZ
 to biographies of some of them.  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2KK0EZ 
    Some quotes from the hearing: 
    
    KEITH GILL: 
    "A few things I am not. I am not a cat. I am not an
institutional investor, nor am I a hedge fund. I do not have
clients and I do not provide personalized investment advice for
fees or commissions. I am just an individual whose investment in
GameStop and posts on social media were based upon my own
research and analysis."
    
    ROBINHOOD CEO VLAD  TENEV: 
    "We always felt comfortable with our liquidity... The
additional capital we raised wasn’t to meet capital requirements
or deposit requirements... " 
    "I recognize customers were very upset (from the
restrictions on trading)... it would have been significantly
worse if we had prevented customers from selling. 
    "Not at all, zero pressure (from anyone on the panel to
decide to restrict trading), it was a collateral depository
decision."  
    "I’m sorry for what happened. I apologize. I’m not going to
say that Robinhood did everything perfect and we haven’t made
mistakes in the past, but what I commit to is making sure that
we improve from this, learn from it, and we don’t make the same
mistakes in the future. And Robinhood as an organization will
learn from this and improve and make sure it doesn’t happen
again, and I will make sure of that.   
    
    CITADEL CEO KEN GRIFFIN 
    "As I was trying to explain... the quality of the execution
varies by the channel of the order, this is a commonly
understood phenomenon in economics."
    "We have fought for 15 years to make that the basis by which
orders are allocated because we strongly believe Citadel is
better to provide better execution for retail orders in the long
run." 
    "We are able to share our trading acumen with retail
investors, give them a better price and give payments for
orderflow to firms like Robinhood. 
    "This has been very important for the democratization of
finance."  
    
    
    

 (Reporting by John McCrank, Elizabeth Culliford, Svea Herbst
and Noel Randewich; Compiled by Megan Davies; Editing by Dan
Grebler)
 ((megan.davies@thomsonreuters.com; +1 646 223 6190;))