Revolut has asked its shareholders to let Nik Storonsky borrow up to $250mn against his stake in the company, five times what the current rules permit. The request went to investors last week as part of a governance exercise the fintech has codenamed Project Shasta.
Storonsky owns roughly 29% of Europe’s most valuable private technology company, which reached a $115bn valuation in an employee secondary share sale last month, according to a person familiar with the matter. That puts the paper value of his holding somewhere around $33bn, none of which is spendable until he sells shares or borrows against them.
Borrowing is the option he has not been able to use at any scale. Revolut’s articles of association currently cap the chief executive’s borrowing against his own shares at $50mn, a limit written when the company was worth a small fraction of what it is worth now.
The mechanism sitting underneath that cap is unusually specific. Any employee holding more than 20% of ordinary shares may pledge a tenth of that holding as security for a loan without board approval, and a further 5% with a majority of directors behind it, and Storonsky is the only person at Revolut who clears the 20% threshold.
