Nubank cofounder Cristina Junqueira emerged as Brazil's second self-made woman billionaire as the digital bank IPOed in the U.S. last December. She's lost that status as the stock cools amid a broader market sell-off. Photographer: Rodrigo Capote/Bloomberg
© 2019 Bloomberg Finance LPShares of Nubank–which trades as Nu Holdings–have faltered since its December initial public offering–and cofounder Cristina Junqueira is no longer a billionaire.
Junqueira, 39, first joined the three-comma club last month when shares of the Brazilian digital bank debuted on the New York Stock Exchange, rising 15% on the first day of trading and fetching a $45 billion valuation. With a 2.9% stake in Nubank, she was worth about $1.3 billion–making her only the second woman in Brazil to be a self-made billionaire at the time, and one of just two female fintech billionaires (the other is Jenny Just). Her fortune now stands at an estimated $900 million amid a broader market sell-off; Nu’s stock price has tumbled about 29% since January began, compared to an 9% drop for the S&P 500 index in the same time period. (A representative for Nubank did not respond to Forbes’ requests for comment.)
Nubank was started in 2013 when chief executive David Vélez recruited Junqueira and CTO Edward Wible as cofounders. Junqueira was 30 years old at the time, a trained engineer with an MBA from Northwestern University. She had recently quit a lucrative job helming the credit card division of mainstay Brazilian bank Itaú and was looking for her next move.
“I never really got why we had to shove these horrible products down people's throats. Customers hated it,” she told Forbes in March, of her time at Itaú. Today, she leads Nubank’s Brazil division as its CEO.
The three cofounders set out to disrupt the fee-laden Brazilian banking market with a digital alternative centered around a user-friendly app. They launched their first key product, a credit card with no annual fee, in 2014. The product was a rarity for Brazil, which was then cornered primarily by five banks—Itaú, Bradesco, Santander, Banco do Brasil and Caixa—known for high lending interest rates, exorbitant fees and poor customer service.
Nubank cofounder Cristina Junqueira, left, founder and CEO David Velez, center, and cofounder Edward Wible, outside the New York Stock Exchange before their company's IPO in December. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
ASSOCIATED PRESSToday, Nubank offers everything from checking and savings accounts to personal loans and life insurance to its 48 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina. With its current $33 billion market capitalization, Nubank is still the world’s largest digital bank. It’s followed by San Francisco-based Chime, which nabbed a $25 valuation in an August funding round, and is in talks to go public at a valuation between $35 billion and $45 billion.
In December, Junqueira told Forbes that she and the other cofounders are in it for the long haul. “We're not selling. None of the early investors are selling, no one from the management team, none of the founders,” she said at the time. She’s stayed true to her word in the weeks since.
Though Nubank’s stock has dipped about 40% since the IPO pop, CEO Vélez remains a billionaire. His 23% stake in the digital bank is worth about $7 billion today, down from $10.2 billion last month. Wible doesn’t have a significant stake in the company; he stepped back from his CTO role in April, but remains with Nubank as a software engineer.
