Anat Alon-Beck

The Lowdown on SEC Approval of the NYSE Primary Direct Listing Proposal

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Direct listings, the most promising disruptor of IPOs, received a significant boost this week, thanks to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruling on a petition from the Council of Institutional Investors.

Most common in the tech industry, direct listings have been put to the test four times in the last two years. Spotify and Slack paved the early path with their direct listings in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Earlier this year, Palantir and Asana used direct listings as an alternative to the traditional underwritten IPO and have continued to generate an enormous amount of media attention in their … Read more

Alternative Venture Capital: The New Unicorn Investors

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The COVID-19 outbreak provides fertile ground for sweeping regulatory changes. On May 19, 2020, for example, President Trump issued “Regulatory Relief to Support Economic Recovery Executive Order 13924”, which prompted the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and Department of Labor (“DOL”) to promulgate new rules to protect investors and facilitate capital formation. The SEC adopted amendments aimed at harmonizing and improving the “patchwork” exempt offering framework, while the DOL announced that 401(k) plan fiduciaries have the ability to invest in private equity funds.

The primary purpose of these changes is to democratize and equalize access to … Read more

Will the Pandemic Sink Deals?

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Almost everyone has experienced buyer’s remorse. It’s the feeling of purchasing, say, a big-screen TV at full price, only to see it on sale later for 50 percent off. Imagine, though, agreeing to pay $6 million for a chain of yoga studios just before the government shuts down exercise classes to slow the spread of a highly infectious disease. Or, more generally, agreeing to buy a company just before the stock market drops 30 percent, throwing the economic future of entire industries into turmoil.

That’s the kind of buyer’s remorse on steroids hitting scores of acquirers that committed to M&A … Read more