Evernorth names former Coinbase investment exec to steer 473 million XRP treasury ahead of Nasdaq debut

Evernorth, an XRP treasury company, said Monday that it has appointed Hugo Jeandesboz as its investment chief, days before its expected Nasdaq listing. The move follows the completion on Friday of Evernorth's merger with special purpose acquisition company Armada Acquisition Corp. II.

At the closing of the deal, Evernorth reported holding 473 million XRP valued at roughly $672 million, alongside $300 million in cash before transaction expenses. Based on data from Bitcoin Treasuries, that XRP position places the company just outside the ranks of the 20 largest publicly traded corporate crypto holders.

Jeandesboz joins from Coinbase Asset Management, where he served as co-chief investment officer and oversaw investment strategies for the exchange's institutional clients. Before that role, he was Coinbase's lead derivatives trader. At Evernorth, he will report to founder and chief executive Asheesh Birla and take responsibility for treasury allocation, liquidity management and active management of the company's XRP holdings.

A more active treasury model

Evernorth intends to move past the buy-and-hold approach used by many traditional crypto treasury firms. The company plans to deploy its XRP through lending, liquidity provision and other yield-generating strategies in an effort to improve its XRP-per-share metric. Birla pointed to emerging opportunities in XRP lending and decentralized finance, saying capturing them requires someone who has priced risk on institutional desks across both traditional and digital asset markets. "We would rather be a participant in this transformation than a spectator of it," he wrote.

The listing arrives after volatile trading in Armada II shares in the run-up to the merger's close. The stock climbed from around $10.68 over the past two weeks to as high as $53 on Oct. 2, then closed Friday at $17.09. It subsequently rose to $18.57 in after-hours trading, with the ticker XRPN.