In a July 6, 2026, scoop citing people familiar with the matter, Richard Heathcote, Tether’s former chief investment officer, is working with PJT Partners to sell part of his ownership stake in the company, Bloomberg said.
Key Takeaways
- Richard Heathcote is selling a portion of his 1.26% personal stake through PJT Partners, an investment banking and advisory firm, not a Tether fundraise.
- Heathcote stepped down as CIO in March and moved into an advisory role after overseeing Tether’s investment portfolio.
- Tether paused a fundraise targeting a valuation as high as $500 billion while it awaits results of its first full financial audit, now underway with a Big Four firm.
- The company blocked some existing shareholders from a secondary stock sale in November to avoid disrupting the primary raise, but approved Heathcote’s sale.
- Tether’s Q1 2026 attestation, prepared by BDO, showed approximately $1.04 billion in net profit and a record $8.23 billion in excess reserves.
What Happened?
Heathcote joined Tether in January 2023 from a broker role at BGC Group, a firm associated with Cantor Fitzgerald. The talks Bloomberg described follow his exit from the company earlier this year and his move into an advisory role, and the stake sale he is now pursuing is personal, not corporate. The company, formally Tether Holdings SA, issues USD₮, a fixture of the Crypto exchange market data CoinLaw tracks across major trading venues.
The distinction matters: Heathcote is monetizing his own equity, separate from the reserves backing USD₮.
PJT Partners, a New York investment bank built on strategic and shareholder advisory work, is acting as the intermediary, a structured process rather than an informal handshake sale.
⚡️JUST IN: TETHER’S EX CIO WANT TO SELL HIS STAKE IN THE COMPANY
— Coin Bureau (@coinbureau) July 6, 2026
Tether’s former CIO Richard Heathcote is reportedly planning to sell part of his 1.26% stake in the USDT issuer, per Bloomberg.
Tether earlier paused fundraising talks at a valuation as high as $500 BILLION while… pic.twitter.com/GhDBQaU1sT
The Raise That Stalled First
Heathcote’s sale surfaces months after Tether’s own capital-raising ambitions hit a wall. Tether earlier paused plans to raise money at a valuation as high as $500 billion, a figure that would have made it one of the most valuable private companies in global finance.
That process slowed as potential investors and bankers pushed for more transparency around Tether’s finances. Tether’s response was to commit to its first full financial audit, hiring a Big Four accounting firm for the job, though details of that engagement remain undisclosed.
That gap between an attestation and an audit is the crux of why the raise stalled. Tether’s quarterly disclosures, including the one covering Q1 2026, were prepared by BDO, a top-five global independent accounting firm, under an ISAE 3000R opinion, a point-in-time assurance snapshot of reserves, not a full-scope audit of the company’s books.
The audit process formally commenced during the same quarter, but a completed full audit and a quarterly attestation carry different weight with institutional investors weighing a $500 billion price tag.
Selective Liquidity Raises Governance Questions
Tether blocked some existing shareholders from a secondary sale of stock in November, citing the risk of disrupting the primary fundraise. That the company then reportedly approved Heathcote’s own sale is the detail that gives this story weight beyond one executive cashing out.
Restricting some shareholders’ liquidity while clearing a former insider’s exit is an ownership-control choice, not just a compliance one. Even a small slice of his holding carries weight: at a reported secondary-market range of $350 billion to $375 billion, Heathcote’s full 1.26% stake would be worth roughly $4.4 billion to $4.7 billion, a discount to the paused $500 billion primary-raise target a private buyer of his shares would have to price around.
Tether’s Balance Sheet Behind the Sale
The stake sale does not touch USD₮’s issuance, reserves, or redemption mechanics, but it lands as Tether’s scale keeps drawing outside scrutiny. The company’s Q1 2026 attestation put total assets at $191,767,741,495 against total liabilities of $183,535,531,717, with assets exceeding liabilities by $8,232,209,778.
Direct and indirect exposure to U.S. Treasury bills amounted to approximately $141 billion, making Tether the 17th largest holder of U.S. Treasuries globally. Reserves also included roughly $20 billion in physical gold and about $7 billion in Bitcoin.
Our responsibility is to make sure USD₮ works without compromise, said Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, in the attestation release. That means building a system that behaves the same way in any market condition, not just when things are stable.
An issuer holding $141 billion in Treasuries is a private conduit for international dollar demand, and its ownership concentration now sits inside the broader stablecoin-regulation debate. Regulators evaluating Decentralized finance markets and stablecoin oversight frameworks have limited visibility into private secondary-market activity like Heathcote’s sale, which is why the audit outcome carries weight past Tether’s own cap table.
CoinLaw’s Takeaway
Heathcote’s exit, and the 1.26% stake behind it, is a case study in monetizing equity before the company can put a defensible number on it: record reserves, a growing profit line, but a $500 billion figure still attestation-backed, not audit-verified. A former CIO selling into that gap, with the company’s approval, tells buyers Tether tolerates quiet secondary liquidity even while it withholds broader shareholder access.
