Magnum Opus Acquisition Limited (OPA) Brings Binance into Forbes PIPE
by Nicholas Alan Clayton on 2022-02-10 at 9:19am

Magnum Opus (NYSE:OPA) announced this morning that crypto exchange Binance has taken the place of existing PIPE investors in committing $200 million to its combination with financial publication Forbes.

The net amount of Forbes PIPE is unchanged at $400 million, but the parties created a new subscription agreement allowing Binance to appoint two members to the company’s post-transaction Board. Binance will be sending its Chief Communications Officer Patrick Hillmann and Bill Chin, head of its venture capital arm, to the Board.

Under current market conditions, some SPACs have struggled to hold together financing packages for their deals or find replacement funds without onerous terms. From that perspective, for Magnum Opus to be able to bring in $200 million for the same initial terms of its PIPE at announcement (at $10.00 per share) for the price of just two Board spots is a big win.

The deal includes a $400 million minimum cash condition, and this funding allows Magnum Opus to keep that covered by the PIPE at a time when redemption rates are high.

It is also potentially a big win for Binance, which appears to have jumped at an opportunity to gain a stake in the mainstream financial coverage of crypto markets. The full scope of the partnership is yet to be seen, but the Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said in the release that he looks forward to bolstering Forbes’ digital initiatives and investment insights platform.

He further noted that, “As Web 3 and blockchain technologies move forward and the crypto market comes of age we know that media is an essential element to build widespread consumer understanding and education.”

Binance is the largest crypto exchange by volume by a significant margin with about $16 billion traded on the platform over the last 24 hours as compared with $3 billion on Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN). But, it has also faced disruption over the past year as a large base of its operations and consumers were in China, which effectively banned the platform in October. A strategic partnership with Forbes could potentially serve as a useful play as it re-orients itself towards North American and European markets.

Magnum Opus has not yet set a date for its completion vote, but the terms of the PIPE agreement have also set the transaction’s completion deadline at March 31. The parties initially announced the $685 million deal on August 26. Jersey City, New Jersey-based Forbes operates a media group including wholly-owned and licensed publications and manages branded invents internationally.

 

Recent Posts
by Nicholas Alan Clayton on 2024-04-18 at 11:50am

AGBA (NASDAQ:AGBA) stock is up over +90% this morning following a +211% premarket spike on news it has signed a definitive agreement to combine with social streaming video platform Triller. AGBA, the company itself, was formed by the $555 million combination between a SPAC of the same name and TAG Companies, a financial services firm...

by Nicholas Alan Clayton on 2024-04-18 at 7:57am

At the SPAC of Dawn Since closing its combination with DHC last month, AI customer engagement firm BEN (NASDAQ:BNAI) has rolled out new partnerships with call center and healthcare clients. And, while it faces a fair bit of competition in the chatbot realm, several high-profile institutions have demonstrated that creating one that provides useful services...

by Nicholas Alan Clayton on 2024-04-17 at 3:05pm

Blue Ocean (NASDAQ:BOCN) provided significantly more texture today in the presentation for its $275 million combination with Asian digital media group TNL Mediagene, which it expects to hit profitability in the second half of the year despite a slight shakeup in financing for the transaction. The first big update in the first investor deck is...

by Nicholas Alan Clayton on 2024-04-17 at 8:13am

At the SPAC of Dawn A brand new market may have just opened up for space de-SPACs as NASA administrator Bill Nelson announced a shift in the agency’s $11 billion program for a mission to return samples from Mars. Rather than rely on the agency’s internal technologies that would be predicted to get a sample...

by Nicholas Alan Clayton on 2024-04-16 at 11:33am

Overall deal flow between SPACs and biotech firms has slowed over the last year, but some pending FDA changes could breathe new life into particular business models within the space. In particular, the FDA has asked Congress as part of its 2025 Legislative Proposals to eliminate the interchangeability designation for biosimilar medications, claiming the existing...

logo

Copyright © 2023 SPACInsider, Inc. All Rights Reserved