eToro Laid Off Workers and Nuked a Plan to Go Public
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O4rP3qwlfo
The Israel-based stock trading company eToro has tried to keep its head down since last year, and while other former Super Bowl advertisers have since removed their expensive ads from public view, eToro has kept the ad up, in all its strange, people-flying glory. One of those badly-CGed investors mumbles “to the moon” as they’re whisked away into the sky. If only that’s what actually happened.
Last July, eTorolaid off 100 workers, about 6% of the company’s workforce. CEO Yoni Assia blamed “current market conditions” for the layoffs and promised it was an effort to “sustain long-term sustainable growth.” At the same time, the company nixed a planned special purpose acquisition company with Fintech Acquisition Corp., which would have taken the company public. EToro failed to get clearance from the Securities and Exchange Commission for its merger.
Since then, eToro has spent time gobbling up fintech companies and adding options trading on its platform, alongside stocks. Unfortunately, at the start of the new year, the company has had to deny claims that its systems were breached.
A user on the popular hacker forum Breached created a thread claiming they have a database of hacked emails, IP addresses, and deposit amounts for the eToro platform. That user has since been banned from the hacker forum, so there’s no way to verify the data inside. Still, eToro claimed its investigations “indicate that there has been no breach on eToro’s side.”
