00:54:36 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:54:36] S0: It's obviously the American who was right. Yeah. But here's the whole point. Compliance isn't what slows Revolut down. Done properly, it's what lets it go faster. Right now, it's carrying racing speed into a corner it hasn't taken before. And let me then use this as a segue to count three. And he pleads to this himself, because it's the empire from two segments ago. A consumer bank in more than 100 countries, he has admitted, runs into sanctions. You cannot do a lot of things in many, many markets. And vetting customers, he admits, has been particularly challenging. [00:55:15] S1: And overcompliance also gets punished too. Right? Like November 2025, confirmed revived, froze the accounts of thousands of Russian citizens living legally in Europe on resident permits. Right? So people who couldn't reach their money, their own money for rent. [00:55:31] S0: And and the man at the top has his own Russian paperwork story. Nine days, 10/19/2022, Ukraine designates his father under presidential decree seven two six for running Gazprom Promgas. October 28, the son renounces his Russian citizenship. British since 2013. From that day, British only. [00:55:56] S1: Physicist born in Lviv, sanctioned by the country of his birth for running an engineering firm, the country he moved to. And nine days later, his son gives up the other passport.
00:55:56 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:55:56] S1: Physicist born in Lviv, sanctioned by the country of his birth for running an engineering firm, the country he moved to. And nine days later, his son gives up the other passport. [00:56:07] S0: Two things alongside it plainly. In March 2022, he published a letter condemning the invasion, saying his father is Ukrainian, and Revolut switched the app off in Russia and Belarus, importantly. That was confirmed. And no Western authority has designated his father, not that we could find. [00:56:27] S1: Yeah. And the defense, through a five year UK application, parliamentary committees and security agencies press regulators on his capital, his shareholders, and his data. He faced a file his Western bond rivals never would, and he got the license. [00:56:42] S0: And the file never closes. He built a bank that vets everyone, and he's the one customer it will never finish vetting. [00:56:50] S1: I guess prosecution rests. [00:56:53] S0: Prosecution rests. A freeze nobody knew about, two breaches in a month through the one door he left open and a passport he can't put down. None of it is the test that matters. That one happens on a stock exchange. [00:57:07] S1: Yeah. And and the reporting says a float within two years add up to 200,000,000,000. Right? He told Rubenstein in April it was two years away, and the due listing isn't a whisper. He's confirmed London and New York for a man who spends two years calling a London float irrational.
00:57:07 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:57:07] S1: Yeah. And and the reporting says a float within two years add up to 200,000,000,000. Right? He told Rubenstein in April it was two years away, and the due listing isn't a whisper. He's confirmed London and New York for a man who spends two years calling a London float irrational. [00:57:26] S0: The only precedent. Wise moved its primary listing to the Nasdaq in May, and its multiple stayed tied to the fundamentals, about four and a half times revenue. Revolut's private mark is 19. On Wise's multiple, Revolut is a $27,000,000,000 company. [00:57:46] S1: Well, the precedent says something narrow. Right? Wise went to New York for the multiples and got the liquidity instead. But Wise is a payments utility. Right? Revolut is, what, 80,000,000 customers, a string of new licenses, and a founder with a health tech habit. Right? So New York will pay for a story. It just has to be able to read it, I guess. [00:58:09] S0: And the reader wants what he never had to give, quarterly numbers and a board with teeth. Remember Reed? Shareholders had no real voice when he built Citi's consumer bank. Storonsky has built his with none at all. [00:58:26] S1: And the listing is when they get their voice. Right? [00:58:29] S0: Yeah. Public markets don't remove founder control. They price it every quarter. [00:58:34] S1: You know, and I'll make the other case at full strength. Right? Founder control is the engine. Put that under a quarterly call, and you bought a slower bank. Both are true. And the IPO is where we find out which one the market believes.
00:58:34 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:58:34] S1: You know, and I'll make the other case at full strength. Right? Founder control is the engine. Put that under a quarterly call, and you bought a slower bank. Both are true. And the IPO is where we find out which one the market believes. [00:58:47] S0: And and here's the number that will set the price. Ireland. Four in five adults there use Revolut, he told Rubenstein. But using isn't banking. [00:58:58] S1: Which takes us straight back to the ladder. Right? So four and five is the wedge working. Premise, the account, your salary lands in, is the top rung. And on every other ladder we've looked at, the top rung is credit. People put their salary where they owe money. [00:59:15] S0: So the scar that kept him off the lending rung may be what keeps him off the top. [00:59:22] S1: A 15% teaser can't buy privacy. Right? So think Mexico buys you an account, not the salary. So either he builds a different drop rung, private bank, wealth, the ATM, the store, the places where people keep money rather than own it, or he climbs into a creditor after all. [00:59:41] S0: And that's the decision the listing, I suppose, will force. [00:59:45] S1: Yeah. Then one prediction each, so you can hold us to them, I guess. When the American Bank opens, which he targeted to the first half of next year, his first new product, I don't think it'll be debit. It'll be credit because Durbin makes debit a worse business the day he crosses that 10,000,000,000. I guess the scar meets the spreadsheet, And in America, I guess the spreadsheet wins. Interesting.
00:59:45 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:59:45] S1: Yeah. Then one prediction each, so you can hold us to them, I guess. When the American Bank opens, which he targeted to the first half of next year, his first new product, I don't think it'll be debit. It'll be credit because Durbin makes debit a worse business the day he crosses that 10,000,000,000. I guess the scar meets the spreadsheet, And in America, I guess the spreadsheet wins. Interesting. [01:00:12] S0: Mine, before the listing, the 40 directs will become fewer than 20. Not because he changes his mind, but because the prospectus has a governance section, and somebody at the underwriters will read it. [01:00:26] S1: Alright. Both in the log along with the flat whites, we have that all recorded in. [01:00:32] S0: Which takes me back to the coffee in Canary Wharf. Three buildings in one view. The bank that died, the bank that's leaving, and the bank that's arriving. And to the question I asked in the first minute, has he built anything that works when he's not in the room? [01:00:51] S1: For the French license was argued by the ACPR for, I guess, Frederic Oduay. I hope I got that right. Mexico was launched by Juan Miguel Carrera. I always get the hard names, I guess. So Quantum Life is on Dropschof's Martin Gilbert's board carried the PRA application, three clean audits since the disputes, pieces of the bank with other people's names on. The machines run without him, cards, FX, check out, ATMs, licenses. What hasn't left the building is the judgment. So every decision about a person, a risk officer, a launch still routes through his room.
01:00:51 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[01:00:51] S1: For the French license was argued by the ACPR for, I guess, Frederic Oduay. I hope I got that right. Mexico was launched by Juan Miguel Carrera. I always get the hard names, I guess. So Quantum Life is on Dropschof's Martin Gilbert's board carried the PRA application, three clean audits since the disputes, pieces of the bank with other people's names on. The machines run without him, cards, FX, check out, ATMs, licenses. What hasn't left the building is the judgment. So every decision about a person, a risk officer, a launch still routes through his room. [01:01:30] S0: Which is the one risk he did not remove. He took it off the balance sheet, off the hiring floor, out of the investment committee, and he kept all of it in one place, himself. Wriston and Reed built a global bank that outlived both of them. Storonsky is building the same empire on a better stack, and he hasn't yet built the part that outlives it. The man who learned at two dead banks not to take risk in complex things has become the most complex thing in his own bank. [01:02:06] S1: And he chose the building site. Alright. So tell us where we got him wrong. And the pinned commence is a real question. So subscribe if the long form earns its keep, and send this to the one person in your bank who still thinks a loan to deposit ratio of six is a typo.