Ryan Reynolds didn’t wait long before making his next big splash.
Just a month after T-Mobile acquired Mint Mobile for $1.35 billion — Reynolds owned a reported 25% of the company at the time of the sale — the “Detective Pikachu” star has entered the payments industry.
In a Monday morning appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, the 46-year-old actor revealed that he has invested in Canadian payments giant Nuvei.
Despite admittedly knowing “nothing about fintech” and saying “thank god I’m not running the company,” Reynolds described Nuvei as a great addition to his varied investment portfolio because of the value he is able to bring to the brand.
“If you look at a gin company, a wireless company and a Welsh football club, those things don’t really go together,” he said during the interview. “But they all had strong brand foundations when I got there.”
Reynolds’ strategy typically involves him becoming the public face of the companies he invests in through campaigns created by his Maximum Effort marketing agency. At Mint Mobile, for example, he starred in a series of commercials for the brand.
“My job is storytelling,” he said. “I think at Maximum Effort our job would be more defined as not necessarily financial investment but emotional investment.”
Despite Nuvei being a B2B company, meaning that it sells products to businesses rather than customers, Reynolds said he still sees an opportunity to create value.
“The most successful B2B companies on the planet all have a story to tell,” he said. “For me it’s all about that creative. The financial investment side of it, I’m no wizard. The emotional investment side, that’s the part where I get the most fun.”
It’s a tactic that has paid off handsomely for the Hollywood star. The Mint Mobile sale may have netted him more than $300 million, while his Aviation American Gin was sold to Diageo for about $610 million in 2020.
DON’T MISS: Want to be smarter and more successful with your money, work & life? Sign up for our new newsletter!
Check out: From McDonald’s $200 million Arch Deluxe to Colgate’s lasagna: Here are 5 of the biggest food fails
