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Robinhood s Top Atty Earned $30M In 2020, IPO Docs Show
Law360 (July 1, 2021, 10:03 PM EDT) Robinhood s chief legal officer, who is a former WilmerHale partner and former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner, earned a $30.1 million pay package last year, according to initial public offering documents that were unveiled Thursday, a day after Robinhood agreed to pay $70 million to end federal regulator s claims over its alleged systemic failures.
Daniel Gallagher Jr. s compensation came to light in Robinhood Market Inc. s registration statement filed with the SEC, which outlines the details of the trading app s highly anticipated IPO and sets a preliminary funding target of $100 million.
Daniel Gallagher Jr. Daniel Gallagher is the chief legal officer at Robinhood. Mike Segar/Reuters A former SEC commissioner under Barack Obama, Gallagher was tapped by Robinhood as its chief legal officer last May. During his tenure as commissioner, from 2011 to 2015, he championed corporate governance reform and, in the language of his SEC bio, advocated against the encroachment of bank-regulatory measures into the capital market. Gallagher held several other positions on the SEC before being appointed commissioner, including deputy director and coacting director of the division of trading and markets.
Gallagher also has significant regulatory experience in the private sector. In 2016, he joined Patomak Global Partners, a financial-services consultancy that provides industry and regulatory expertise, as its president, before becoming the top lawyer at the pharmaceutical company Mylan no
Robinhood Financial has determined that it takes a regulator to deal with the regulators.
The online trading platform’s popularity has skyrocketed over the last several months, as people use its app and website to buy and sell investments often for the first time.
But its fast growth also has generated increased regulatory scrutiny.
In December, Robinhood agreed to pay $65 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges that it did not execute trades at the best prices for its customers because of agreements to send its order flows to certain firms.
In a separate action, Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin charged Robinhood with violating the state’s new fiduciary rule by the way it targets users, entices them to trade and fails to maintain the platform’s infrastructure.