(Bloomberg) -- David Velez, the billionaire co-founder and chief executive officer of Nu Holdings Ltd., sold stock Wednesday for the second time since a 2021 initial public offering.
Velez unloaded 31 million shares, or about 3% of his total stake, via his trust Rua California Ltd. to raise $404 million, according to a filing. The sale is intended for “estate planning purposes,” the company said.
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Nu jumped more than 5% Wednesday after reporting second-quarter profit that more than doubled from a year ago. Shares of the digital bank gained another 3% on Thursday to touch a record intraday high and have now surged more than 65% this year.
Nu, the holding company behind Brazil’s Nubank and other subsidiaries operating in Mexico and Colombia, has surged to become Latin America’s most valuable publicly-traded financial institution with a market capitalization of nearly $66 billion. Founded in 2013, it’s one of the world’s largest digital banks with nearly 105 million customers, including almost 60% of the adult population in Brazil.
Velez, a Colombian native, first sold stock in August 2023, unloading 25 million shares for $191 million at the time. He said in an interview that the proceeds would largely go toward funding his foundation with his wife Mariel Reyes which is focused on leadership and education initiatives in Latin America.
Velez’s stake in the firm stands at about 20%, giving him a net worth of $13.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
(Updates to add shares hitting a record in third paragraph.)
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