Ryan Reynolds has admitted that he’s “no wizard” when it comes to investing—despite raking in millions of dollars from well-timed business bets in recent years.
On Monday, the Hollywood A-lister appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss his recently announced investment in Canadian fintech company Nuvei.
Reynolds’s investment in Nuvei came just weeks after Mint Mobile, the wireless provider in which Reynolds held an estimated 25% stake, was sold to telco giant T-Mobile for $1.35 billion.
He told CNBC on Monday that he knew “nothing about fintech,” despite his investment in Nuvei, a Montreal-based firm that specializes in payments technology.
“Thank god I’m not running the company,” he quipped. “My job is storytelling—I think at Maximum Effort, our job would be more defined in not necessarily financial investment but emotional investment. If you look at a gin company, a wireless company, and a Welsh football club, those things don’t really go together if you think about it, but they all have strong brand foundations.”
In recent years, the Deadpool star has built up a reputation as a savvy investor thanks to bets on Aviation Gin, Toronto-based password manager 1Password, wealth management firm Wealthsimple, and his digital marketing agency Maximum Effort.
In 2020, Aviation Gin was sold in a deal worth $610 million.
“For me, it’s all about that creative [approach]—the financial investment side of it I am no wizard at, it’s the emotional investment side,” he told CNBC.
“I am very lucky to have an incredible team of people that are looking for exciting and interesting opportunities, places that have a strong brand foundation, that just that have so much room to grow in terms of storytelling.”
Reynolds noted that usually the companies he considered investing in were not as mature as Nuvei.
“America gets a lot of credit for innovation, and I think there’s something quite funny and interesting and a fun story to tell about Canada flexing a little bit—this is already a multibillion-dollar global company with an amazing story to tell,” he said. “I think a lot of people are running away from fintech, [but] this is one company we’re running toward.”
