Benzinga is a financial news and conference company in Detroit, Michigan. The company employs an editorial staff of about 30 members, and publishes hundreds of stories per day, "including paid promotions written by a dedicated team," according to the Columbia Journalism Review.[2][3][4][5] In addition to providing news, analytics and sponsored promotions, Benzinga also produced conferences aimed at small investors interested in cannabis, crypto-currency and "fintech.".[4][6][7][8][9][10] Benzinga also supplied unspecified services to online brokerage companies such as Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, Questrade, and Morningstar.[11][12] Beringer Capital of Toronto acquired Benzinga in 2021 in a private transaction that "valued Benzinga at more than $300 million," according to Benzinga, although this assertion was never independently verified.[13][14][11]
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Headquarters | Detroit, Michigan[1] |
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Founder(s) | Jason Raznick |
URL | Benzinga.com |
Launched | May 18, 2009 |
Jason Raznick founded Benzinga from his home in Birmingham, Michigan in 2010.[15] [16] Raznick, who has said he favors "rule breakers, dreamers and doers," received a 2022 award for "disrupting financial media" from the Michigan Venture Capital Association, which described itself as "the voice of Michigan's investment community."[17][18] In 2010, during its initial stages when the company operated from Raznick's home, Raznick acknowledged using telephone conversations to impersonate several nonexistent employees, as he believed that a solo presence might not be taken seriously in business.[19] In 2015, Benzinga from suburban Detroit region to a site in Downtown Detroit.[15]
Although not a defendant, in 2017 Benzinga was implicated in two separate civil lawsuits filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning fraudulent stock promotion.[20][21] The SEC charged 27 firms and individuals in the two suits,[22] in which defendants ultimately paid individual fines ranging up to about $61,000.[23]
Related to this action, the SEC issued an "investor warning" noting that: "Articles on an investment research website that appear to be an unbiased source of information or provide commentary on multiple stocks may be part of an undisclosed paid stock promotion.".[24]
Benzinga said it was "a victim, not a culprit" in the fraudulent stock promotions, and unaware of problems with articles at issue with the SEC that Benzinga published during a nearly four-year period.[25] The purported news items, numbering in the "hundreds," were also published by SmallCapNetwork.com, InvestorVillage.com, Fool.com, and several other comparable websites, according the SEC, which did not charge any of the sites with wrongdoing.
At least one of the defendants who agreed to an SEC settlement in 2018 [26] continued to provide material published by Benzinga as of August 2023, through her financial communications company.[27]
In 2011 Benzinga plagiarized an entire op-ed essay from The Wall Street Journal written by Berkeley law professor Orin Kerr. Benzinga published this work under the pseudonymous byline "Patrick Harvard." Kerr's essay was published separately around the same time by Forbes.com under the byline of Benzinga CEO "Jason Raznick," who was among more than 1,000 unpaid Forbes "contributors" at the time.[28][29] Kerr said subsequently of the plagiarism that he was "more amused and intrigued by this than annoyed or upset."[28]
Benzinga's Raznick was among the seven largest unsecured creditors of crypto-currency broker Voyager Digital. This relationship was undisclosed in Benzinga's Voyager news coverage, including its June 13, 2022, "Exclusive" in which Voyager's CEO claimed that its customers' assets "are safe."[30] Within weeks of this, two federal agencies jointly ordered Voyager to "cease and desist" from false statements about its deposit insurance status "directly or by implication."[31][32] Voyager had suspended operations July 1, 2022.
Private equity firm Beringer Capital is acquiring a majority stake in Benzinga.