Singapore’s superapp Grab has gotten the green light from shareholders on its Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) deal with listed shell company Altimeter Growth Corp and will list in the United States on Thursday (Dec 2).
The S$54 billion (US$40 billion) initial public offering (IPO) via a SPAC merger was set to happen by the end of this year, Grab had earlier said. The combined entity will start trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker GRAB.
Grab’s valuation is the largest so far in the SPAC space, and the ride-hailing giant will receive about S$6 billion (US$4.5 billion) in cash proceeds.
A SPAC is a shell company that raises funds to acquire a private company with the purpose of taking it public, allowing such targets to sidestep a traditional IPO.
Green light from shareholders
Altimeter said in a statement that the majority of shareholders voted in favour of the deal and almost all of the shareholders did not vote for a redemption of their shares.
Grab’s Class A shares will trade as GRAB. Its Class B shares which entitles to 45 votes per share, will be held by management, giving it about 60 per cent of voting rights.
Grab and Altimeter had announced the SPAC deal in April this year, near the height of the SPAC boom, but had to delay the completion of the merger to complete audit checks required by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Third quarter results impacted by Covid-19 restrictions
The ride-hailing firm had reported widening losses of US$988 million for its third quarter, from US$621 million a year ago. Revenue fell nine per cent to US$157 million, due to the impact from pandemic restrictions.
Grab recently faced an outage on its app which lasted for more than two days caused by system upgrade issues.
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