Vesttoo CEO Yaniv Bertele — LinkedIn
Vesttoo co-founders CEO Yaniv Bertele and Chief Financial Officer Alon Lifshitz have both been fired by the company’s board of directors in the wake of a recent fraud scandal. Also, a Delaware court ruled that the two cannot receive any further compensation payments.
“Unfortunately, opportunistic parties exploited the temporary crisis the company was facing to advance aggressive and unilateral actions aimed at taking control of the company,” a clearly angry Lifshitz and Bertele said about their dismissals in a statement.
“Despite an extensive investigation, no evidence has been found against them, let alone presented,” they added. “Consequently, in the absence of any substantial findings, baseless and deceitful allegations against the founders began to be leaked to the media in an attempt to tarnish their reputation, without affording them a basic opportunity to address these claims.”
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Vesttoo recently saw its value plummet and it closed offices and let go, overall, about 75% of its staff. The company is now reportedly seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
In July it was reported that Vesttoo investors allegedly provided fake letters of credit (LOCs) to insurers for reinsurance transactions on the Vesttoo platform are believed to total a sum of around $4 billion. Most of these letters reportedly came from what was described as a leading Chinese bank, which appears to have been unaware of the situation.
Vesttoo first hit the coveted unicorn status in October of 2022 when the firm raised $80 Million in a Series C financing round that left it with a $1.1 billion valuation. And it was just this past May that the firm hit a valuation of as much as $2 billion.
Founded in 2018 by CEO Yaniv Bertele, CPO Alon Lifshitz, and CTO Ben Zickel,, Vesttoo specializes in data-driven risk management solutions for the P&C and longevity markets, using “cutting-edge technologies to transfer General Insurance, Lapse, and Longevity risk to the capital markets.” Vesttoo declares that it provides insurers and pension funds with low-cost, strategic risk transfer to the capital markets, while investors benefit from correlated, high-yield investments with remote loss possibilities.
