Quote:
Originally Posted by verticaldoug
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.
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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.