Evernorth Holdings Inc. has appointed former Coinbase Asset Management co-chief investment officer Hugo Jeandesboz to oversee its cryptocurrency treasury, which held approximately 473 million XRP at closing.
The Nasdaq-listed company announced the appointment on Oct. 12. Jeandesboz will report to founder and chief executive Asheesh Birla and will be responsible for asset allocation, liquidity management and the active management of Evernorth’s holdings.
He will also act as the company’s senior contact for trading counterparties and custodians responsible for safeguarding its assets.
Jeandesboz has more than a decade of experience in institutional trading and portfolio management across digital and traditional financial markets. At Coinbase Asset Management, he served as co-chief investment officer and led investment strategies designed for institutional clients.
Before that, he was lead derivatives trader at Coinbase, where he managed options, futures and blockchain-based markets. His earlier positions included interest rate derivatives trading at HSBC and quantitative strategy work at Societe Generale, where mathematical models and data were used to inform trading decisions.
Evernorth begins trading on Nasdaq
Evernorth’s merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II was completed on Oct. 9, bringing its XRP treasury into the public markets. Armada was a special purpose acquisition company created to take another business public.
At closing, Evernorth reported approximately 473 million XRP and about $300 million in gross cash proceeds before transaction expenses. Investors in the deal included Arrington Capital, SBI Group, Ripple, Pantera Capital, Kraken and GSR.
The company’s common stock began trading on Nasdaq under the symbol XRPN on Oct. 12. Its stated aim is to increase XRP per share through institutional and decentralised finance yield strategies, participation in the XRP ecosystem and capital markets activity.
XRP per share reflects the company’s token holdings relative to its outstanding stock, meaning that issuing additional shares is relevant when assessing growth in the underlying assets.
Buying Evernorth shares gives investors an interest in a company whose performance will depend on treasury decisions, financing and business operations. Holding cryptocurrency directly, by contrast, gives the owner the digital asset itself.
Birla connected Jeandesboz’s appointment with potential opportunities involving tokenised real-world assets and decentralised finance. A proposed institutional lending framework for the XRP Ledger, outlined by Ripple, would keep borrower assessment outside the blockchain while using the ledger for loan servicing and repayments.
Separately, Standard Chartered announced custody support for RLUSD on the XRP Ledger on Oct. 12. The service is intended to safeguard eligible institutions’ Ripple USD holdings, which are separate from XRP. A planned integration with Ripple and LMAX Group could allow eligible assets to be used as collateral for trading while remaining in bank custody, subject to testing, documentation and approvals.
Evernorth also corrected the number of Class A shares issued to delayed-funding subscribers at closing. The company said 1,078,614 shares had been issued, replacing the 663,510 figure in its post-closing securities filing, which it attributed to a clerical error.
The corrected figure represented the aggregate subscription amount, paid in cash or XRP, divided by $10 per share.
