Wiggle CRC bought by Frasers Group for 10 million pounds
 

Essentially a bankruptcy (or "administration" in UK speak) fire sale:

https://www.pinkbike.com/news/wiggle...0-million.html

Deal includes the IP, so all the in-house brands are going with it - Nukeproof, Vitus, etc. I'm most bummed about Nukeproof as they make my favorite flat pedals, and the mountain bikes are pretty good too. Totally unclear what the future of the brands will be.

I believe the original purchase by Signa in 2021 was for $645 million, mostly debt-financed. Said debt is presumably what led to falling into administration.

Interesting. I hope they do something with the brand, that includes shipping to the US. Sad to see a longstanding player tumble. Let's see what happens next I guess.

The deal had no debt financing and it was much more complicated involved a reverse merger listing on the NYSE by a SPAC (yucaipa- Bill Clinton's old buddy Ron Burkle). The SPAC paid $645mm for Signa Sport, and part of the $645mm went to Wiggle/CRC to Bridgepoint who was the owner at the time. (They may have recieved 240mm in stock ) The new entity SSU was valued around $3.2b at the time. It was all inflated stock swapping with SPACs and retail investors + pipe investors being the suckers.

There is a lot of shame here to go around for such a crappy deal. Citi and Jeffries for being the deal advisors. Moelis for giving the fairness opinion. PIF and Softbank at the two largest pipe investors (but in fairness Softbank has a crappy record of hubris around this time.)

SPACs were responsible for more sham listings at this time. A proverbial gold rush of grifters. And of course, CNBC was right there hyping the trend.

I remember an interview Chamath P (Spac Jesus) gave around this time about his selling of shares of Virgin Galactic. I couldn't believe he could keep a straight face for the false narrative he was telling.

As bad as Signa was, I don't even think this qualifies as the worst SPAC deal of all.
It was another huge failing by the SEC and the exchanges.

I wouldn't touch a SPAC with Sauron's ten foot pole.

That seems like all fun and games compared to the Truth Social spac, which oddly doesnt get much press.

This post by Jacob Dudek does a really good job of pulling it all apart.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/postm...b-dudek-xau9f/

Worth a read.

This was a good read.

I pulled the original prospectus at the closing. SSU paid the private equity firm 214mm EUR in cash, 275mm EUR in Stock, and 22 mm EUR deferred for WIGGLE/CRC. The PE firm must have thought they hit the mother lode. Now the equity is zero. The cash paid was probably closer to FMV.

The SPAC deal incurred $42mm in fees, plus they paid deferred commission to the broker responsible for the original SPAC listing for Yucaipa of $9mm.

SSU the public listing did not have any debt until it took out a revolver from LBBW on 5/22 for 100mm EUR for working capital. It was secured with a floating rate of EURIBOR + 350

You can see from the fees generated that it was a really good business for the banks and brokers. Which is why SPACs were so popular with banks. But as the linkedIn post states, 95% of spacs lost money.