Celsius Won’t Bring CFO Back as Advisor For $93K Per Month After All

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  • A Cel­sius backer had for­mal­ly object­ed to bring­ing Bol­ger back, alleg­ing he was either not well informed or inten­tion­al­ly mis­led investors
  • Bol­ger said he was “hap­py” the lender’s liq­uid­i­ty prac­tices just days before with­draw­al freezes

Cel­sius has revert­ed its inten­tion to retain its for­mer chief finan­cial offi­cer as an advi­sor, right before a hear­ing on the mat­ter was set to take place.

The cryp­tocur­ren­cy lender with­drew its ear­li­er motion in a Fri­day fil­ing, which had request­ed the right to keep bank­ing vet­er­an Rod Bol­ger on through­out its bank­rupt­cy pro­ceed­ings. Cel­sius didn’t pro­vide a rea­son for its change of mind.

Cel­sius orig­i­nal­ly filed to seek Bolger’s advi­so­ry ser­vices on July 25, with a court hear­ing sched­uled for today (Mon­day). If the motion were approved, Cel­sius would have paid Bol­ger 120,000 Cana­di­an dol­lars ($92,800) per month as an advi­sor, pro­rat­ed for par­tial months. 

The firm paid Bol­ger $750,000 per year base salary, as well as a per­for­mance-based cash bonus of up to 75% along­side stock and token options, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. Bol­ger was first hired in Feb­ru­ary and only spent five months at Cel­sius in total. He pre­vi­ous­ly served as chief finan­cial offi­cer at Roy­al Bank of Canada.

Bol­ger resigned on June 30, about three weeks after the plat­form froze with­drawals on its net­work. But his vol­un­tary ter­mi­na­tion required serv­ing an eight-week notice peri­od, mean­ing he’s tech­ni­cal­ly still employed at Cel­sius and will con­tin­ue receiv­ing a base salary until the end of August.

Cel­sius didn’t return Block­works’ request for com­ment by press time.

Would-be advisor Bolger lauded Celsius liquidity before collapse

The lender’s move to with­draw the motion fol­lows a for­mal objec­tion by investor Kei­th Suc­kno. In an August 2 fil­ing, Suc­kno said Cel­sius failed to explain why Bolger’s ser­vices were required and drew atten­tion to alleged pro­vi­sion of “false infor­ma­tion” days pri­or to the with­draw­al freeze.

He point­ed to a com­pa­ny blog post pub­lished on June 8, in which the for­mer exec­u­tive over­stat­ed the firm’s finan­cial position.

In that post, Bol­ger said he was hap­py about Cel­sius’ “strong liq­uid­i­ty frame­work, estab­lished prac­tices around liq­uid­i­ty data” and that the firm was “in a strong posi­tion to weath­er the recent mar­ket turbulence.”

Suc­kno object­ed to Bolger’s appoint­ment as an advi­sor, say­ing he was either not well informed or inten­tion­al­ly mis­led investors. 

After Bolger’s res­ig­na­tion, Cel­sius pro­mot­ed head of investor rela­tions Chris Fer­raro to chief finan­cial offi­cer. The lender filed for bank­rupt­cy just two days lat­er. Its native token CEL has lost two-thirds of its val­ue so far this year, but its price has more than dou­bled in the past month, Block­works Research shows. 


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  • Shali­ni Nagarajan

    Block­works

    Reporter

    Shali­ni is a cryp­to reporter from Ban­ga­lore, India who cov­ers devel­op­ments in the mar­ket, reg­u­la­tion, mar­ket struc­ture, and advice from insti­tu­tion­al experts. Pri­or to Block­works, she worked as a mar­kets reporter at Insid­er and a cor­re­spon­dent at Reuters News. She holds some bit­coin and ether. Reach her at [email pro­tect­ed]

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