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After shaking the foundations of Wall Street, stock trading app Robinhood is looking to be its neighbor.
The online brokerage, which has soared to a new level of notoriety this week for its role in the GameStop stock trading phenomenon gripping the nation, is looking for a roughly 60K SF office in New York City, The Real Deal reports.
Individual investors banded together via online forums to inflate stock prices on nostalgia-driven publicly traded companies, such as GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry, that had attracted hedge fund short-sellers, upending the market. The retail traders are largely using Robinhood to do so, placing it squarely in the center of the finance story of the year so far. Members of Congress called for a hearing on the incident, and Robinhood is facing intense pressure after halting stock purchases Thursday.
The company needed to raise cash in order to manage the onslaught of trades, drawing at least $500M from a line of credit and taking on $1B of new investment, The New York Times reports. The Silicon Valley-based company has office space in Menlo Park, Denver, London and Florida, according to TRD.
Robinhood's office search comes amid rising confidence in the New York City market after a disastrous year. The Real Estate Board of New York’s commercial broker confidence index rose 34% between the third and fourth quarters of last year, coming in at 2.89 out of 10 at the end of December.
“Broker confidence rebounding at the end of 2020 illustrates that the industry has an increasingly positive view that we can overcome the immediate challenges we face, including vaccinating all New Yorkers, getting New Yorkers back to work and boosting our economy,” REBNY President James Whelan said.
Three major office leases were signed around New York City over the past week, signaling that the worst of the leasing market might be in the past. In Midtown South, meal delivery service Freshly announced it will take up 92K SF for a headquarters at 63 Madison Ave., and Beam Suntory will take up 100K SF for a new global HQ at 11 Madison Ave. Apple, another tech firm, has signed a deal to take up 90K SF at Kaufman Astoria Studio in Queens for its AppleTV+ streaming service.
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