Cooley and Milbank tapped through SPAC deal

Cooley and Milbank tapped through SPAC deal

Also Freshfields assisted on a high-profile deal involving a Singapore company that deals with blank checks

During a $2.1bn special purpose acquisition deal, Cooley and Milbank will take gay social networking app Grindr from Tiga Acquisition Corp (TAC) through a SPAC merger.

Upon listing on the New York Stock Exchange, existing equity holders will retain a 78 percent ownership stake as the company consolidates via the merger. The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.

In West Hollywood, Cooley is advising Grindr, while Milbank is advising TAC, a blank check company based in Singapore. As well as Raine Securities, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer advises Grindr's financial advisors.

As part of Cooley's team, David Peinsipp is co-chair of the firm's capital markets group, Jamie Leigh is co-chair of its mergers and acquisitions group, Kristin VanderPas is a securities partner, Garth Osterman leads its M&A practice and Jeffrey Tolin and Aaron Pomeroy lead the tax practice.

This Palo Alto law firm represented Grindr previously in a lawsuit filed in 2015 alleging a violation of California law regarding the platform's cancellation policy. That suit was dismissed under California law in the following year.

In addition to Rod Miller in New York, Neil Whoriskey in Singapore and David Zemans in New York, Milbank's team comprises both capital markets and corporate partners.

Founder and chair of Grindr's board of directors James Lu praised the deal as a "milestone event" for the company and its users.

He said that working with TAC to bring Grindr into public markets furthers his mission of connecting the LGBTQ+ community. Among the unifying characteristics of the LGBTQ+ community are resilience, courage and creativity.

Since its founding in 2009, Grindr has grown its number of paying users by 31.5 percent to 723,000 in 2021 and has reported 10.8 million active monthly users in 2021.

"The business combination with Grindr represents an excellent opportunity to create key social infrastructure for a traditionally underserved segment of society," said Ray Zage, chairman and CEO of TAC. The growth of Grindr as the most popular social network for LGBTQ+ people has enabled the company to monetize in a rapidly expanding market."

After the deal, Zage will be joined on the board of directors by Lu and Jeff Bonforte, the current CEO of Grindr.

A committee of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) mandated the sale of Grindr to San Vicente Acquisition in 2020, after Beijing Kunlun, advised by Jones Day, sold the video game to its current owner, San Vicente Acquisition, for $608 million.

There is a probability that CFIUS will also approve the current deal.

Due to new rules instituted by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the number of SPAC transactions in the US has dropped dramatically following a boom in popularity over the last two years as an alternative to a traditional IPO.

As part of a $1.3 billion pact with Thunder Bridge Capital Partners, Nelson Mullins and Simpson Thacher in March took over the leadership of the Tokyo-based cryptocurrency market, Coincheck.