Benzinga

Benzinga is a financial news website headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. The company provides financial news, analytics content, and daily newsletters. It publishes both original news and syndicated news. It was founded in 2010 by Jason Raznick.

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.

History

Jason Raznick founded Benzinga from his home in Birmingham, Michigan in 2010.

Benzinga partnered with Microsoft to bring its content to Windows 8 during the operating system’s release in 2012.

In 2015, Benzinga moved into a new headquarters building in the One Campus Martius building, Compuware’s former base of operations, in Downtown Detroit.

Benzinga has also provided services to online brokerage companies such as Robinhood, TD Ameritrade, Questrade, and Morningstar.

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."

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.

In addition to its news and analytics services, Benzinga also hosts several yearly business events, such as the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards, and the Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference. The Benzinga Cannabis Capital Conference has been held in Miami and Chicago. It is centered around topics related to the cannabis industry, such as legislation and capital markets. It has featured speakers such as Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

In November 2023, Benzinga has held its conferences, the Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards and Benzinga Future of Digital Assets at the Convene at 225 Liberty Street in New York City. Kevin O’Leary gave the keynote address at the 2023 Benzinga Fintech Deal Day & Awards. While the Fintech Deal Day & Awards covers topics related to financial technology, the Future of Digital Assets conference centers around digital assets such as Web3 technology.

'Pump and Dump'

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. The SEC charged 27 firms and individuals in the two suits, in which defendants ultimately paid individual fines ranging up to about $61,000.

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.".

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. 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
didn't charge any of the sites with wrongdoing.

At least one of the defendants who agreed to an SEC settlement in 2018 continued to provide material published by Benzinga as of August 2023, through her financial communications company.

Plagiarism

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."Is Benzinga a front for plagiarism?"
/ref> Kerr said subsequently of the plagiarism that he was "more amused and intrigued by this than annoyed or upset."

Further reading

*Wade Cook
* Oct. 20. 2021*
*Kerr, Orin, Sept. 16, 2011 "Is Benzinga.com Just A Front for Plagiarists?" Volokh Conspiracy (law blog

* Benton, Joshua, Feb. 9, 2022 "An incomplete history of how Forbes.com became a platform for scams, grifts and bad journalism

Nieman Journalism Lab, Harvard University
*Fortson, Danny, "D-list actress ‘ran fake news scam to push up shares’" London Times April 16, 2017
*Seeking Alpha
*The Motley Fool

References

{{reflist, refs=

{{cite news, work=Squawk Box, title=Benzinga CEO Jason Raznick on Beringer Capital acquiring majority stake, quote=Private equity firm Beringer Capital is acquiring a majority stake in Benzinga., date=October 25, 2021, publisher=CNBC, url=https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/10/25/benzinga-ceo-jason-raznick-on-beringer-capital-acquiring-majority-stake.html

2010 establishments in Michigan
American websites
News websites
American financial news websites