Evernorth, a Ripple-backed XRP treasury company, has named former Coinbase Asset Management co-chief investment officer Hugo Jeandesboz as its investment chief just before the start of Nasdaq trading under the ticker XRPN. The appointment was announced Monday and follows Friday’s completion of Evernorth’s SPAC merger with Armada Acquisition Corp. II.
At closing, Evernorth reported holding 473 million XRP worth approximately $672 million, plus about $300 million in cash before transaction expenses. According to Bitcoin Treasuries data, that XRP position places Evernorth just outside the 20 largest publicly traded corporate crypto holders. Jeandesboz will lead treasury allocation, liquidity management and active management of the XRP holdings under founder and CEO Asheesh Birla. At Coinbase, Jeandesboz led investment strategies for institutional clients and previously served as lead derivatives trader.
Evernorth said it intends to move beyond the buy-and-hold model used by many crypto treasury companies. It plans to deploy XRP through lending, providing liquidity and other yield strategies to increase its XRP-per-share metric. Birla said such opportunities require someone who has priced risk on institutional desks in both traditional and digital asset markets, adding: "We would rather be a participant in this transformation than a spectator of it."
The Nasdaq debut follows volatile trading in Armada Acquisition Corp. II shares. The stock rose from about $10.68 over the past two weeks to as high as $53 on Oct. 2, before closing Friday at $17.09 and then climbing to $18.57 in after-hours trading. Evernorth was previously expected to close on Oct. 7 and begin trading on Oct. 8, but an administrative delay shifted the timeline. The business combination was completed on Oct. 9, with XRPN expected to begin trading on Monday, Oct. 12, subject to Nasdaq listing requirements.
Hussein Zangana, director of community at the XRP Ledger Foundation, said the listing concerns Evernorth itself rather than the SPAC, and described it as the first time a major company focused on participating in the XRP Ledger through yield strategies, liquidity and infrastructure is trading on the stock market.
