RCI Hospitality Holdings is a publicly listed strip club company (NASDAQ ticker symbol: RICK) connected to years of criminal activity including prostitution, murder, sexual assault and harassment of female performers by male customers, and human trafficking allegations. We object to the trade in women's bodies for men's sexual entertainment on the stock market. And we especially object to ownership of RICK shares by any investor claiming to be "faith based", "ethical" or dedicated to "responsible investment". We call them out when we find them.
Since the end of 2024, five more shareholders have dumped their strip club shares after we pressured them! Read more below.
Faith based investor CEO minimises strip club ownership
We didn't think investment in the sexual exploitation of women aligned with Atlanta based Blue Trust's claims of applying "biblical wisdom to help clients make wise financial decisions". We also thought it contradicted the company's claims made as an affiliate of Christian investment movement, Faith Driven Investor.
L-R: Ron Blue, Blue Trust Founder; Brian Shepler, Blue Trust CEO; Henry Kaestner, Faith Driven Investor Co-Founder
We asked CEO Brian Shepler about Blue Trust's strip club investment.
Brian responded:
We do not dictate conscience for our clients, and there is no master list of companies we exclude. We have built an industry-leading platform to help clients express their personal convictions in multiple ways that work for them..
Our clients have the option to screen out any company they find objectionable..
..we’ve created a unique faith and impact private investment platform specifically as a vehicle to channel client dollars into investments for social influence and Kingdom impact, such as fighting human trafficking..
Blue Trust has close to $20 billion in AUM. The $270 position you’re calling out was not purchased by us and is currently not in any of our client portfolios. We primarily invest in ETFs, mutual funds, and other private investments. So, RICK would not be on our list of securities to purchase.
(Full response in comments here)
We were confused. Blue Trust's formal financial records signed off by its Chief Compliance Officer verified ownership of the shares.
(As an aside, we were interested to discover that Blue Trust's current CCO Yinka Akinsola is a former Compliance Director for Lutheran investment firm Thrivent. Read about our winning campaign calling on Thrivent to dump ITS strip club shares here.)
Brian's response raised other questions for us. Why would a company that helps its clients fight human trafficking also facilitate the prostitution of women? Does Blue Trust genuinely believe the buying and selling of women's bodies for men's sexual entertainment on the stock market is a matter of "personal conviction" rather than something heinous, to be identified, called out and explicitly prohibited by his company? And was Brian actually trivialising the $270 worth of strip club shares? If not $0, what is Brian's ceiling for ownership of stock representing the prostitution, assault, murder, abuse and (alleged) trafficking of women?
We didn't hear back from Brian.
So we asked Blue Trust's affiliates at Faith Driven Investor what they thought of Blue Trust's strip club investment:
Neither the organisation nor its CEO Henry Kaestner replied.
The good news is, Blue Trust (quietly) sold off its strip club shares. We're confident this wouldn't have happened without us taking the stance that one share in RCI Hospitality Holding is too many, and putting pressure on them to divest.
First Trust
We started calling on First Trust and CEO Jim Bowen to dump their $1million+ strip club investment in August 2024.
Call to @ftportfolios to dump $rick. Women are not cattle to be flogged on the stock market - why is #firsttrust propping this up? Do clients know you funnel their $$ into sexploitation of women?#divest #corporatesocialresponsibility #endsexploitation
— LSKennedy (@LSKennedy5) August 19, 2024
📢Jim Bowen https://t.co/zaxUJyc3sp
In November 2024, First Trust reported ownership of zero RICK shares.
Brighton Jones hides comments exposing strip club investment before divesting
When we spotted a Brighton Jones executive celebrating the company's "female philanthropy" inititatives (hashtag-women-living-a-richer-life), we wanted to understand why they were also invested in the exploitation of women through their strip club shareholding. We thought the investment was blatantly misaligned with the company's efforts to support women.
We left a comment outlining our concerns and calling on the company to dump its strip club shares.
The comment disappeared. So we posted again, asking why the comment had been deleted and restating our questions about Brighton Jones' strip club investment. We tagged CEO Jon Jones and Chief Compliance Officer Christina Owens.
We got no response.
In April 2025, Brighton Jones reported ownership of zero RICK shares as of March 31.
Swiss double dumping
In February 2025, Swiss National Bank and Zurcher Kantonalbank reported ownership of zero RCI Hospitality Holdings shares. We had been calling on SNB to dump their strip club shares for over a year, and tracking Zurcher Kantonalbank's investment.
UPDATE: $RICK cops Swiss double dumping after sellout by @SNB_BNS + Zurcher Kantonalbank. For a year we’ve been calling on these shareholders to #divest from mega pimp-criminal strip club co RCI Hospitality. Is this permanent Swiss National Bank? #sexploitationstock https://t.co/iv6zblK3qT pic.twitter.com/8sUU33w4Uq
— LSKennedy (@LSKennedy5) February 10, 2025
Can @SNB_BNS explain in detail how investing in American strip clubs *where female employees have described being physically + sexually assaulted* is “acting in accordance with the economic interests of Switzerland”? #divest #sexploitationstock $rick pic.twitter.com/QF1bTWaM21
— LSKennedy (@LSKennedy5) January 4, 2024
We will be watching to make sure these investment companies do not buy back in to RCI Hospitality Holdings, and asking our supporters to call on others to dump their strip club shares.
See also
Win: Two (more) faith based investors dump strip club shares
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