Grindr’s owners may take it private after a financial squeeze

In Brief

Grindr’s bulk owners are scrambling to instrumentality the LGBTQ+ dating app backstage aft a banal diminution triggered a idiosyncratic fiscal crisis, according to a report from Semafor.

The owners successful question are Raymond Zage, a erstwhile hedge money manager and U.S. expat present based successful Singapore, and James Lu, a Chinese-American entrepreneur and erstwhile Amazon and Baidu exec. Together they led the 2020 acquisition of Grindr from Chinese ownership for implicit $600 million, past took the app nationalist successful 2022 done a blank-check merger.

Reportedly, Zage and Lu, who unneurotic power much than 60% of Grindr, pledged astir each their shares arsenic collateral for idiosyncratic loans from a portion of Singapore’s sovereign wealthiness money Temasek. After Grindr began a descent astatine the extremity of September, those loans became undercollateralized (worth little than the debt), truthful the Temasek portion seized and sold immoderate of the shares past week.

Grindr’s banal descent appears disconnected from concern fundamentals – profits were up 25% successful the 2nd quarter, Semafor notes, though it has seen immoderate executive turnover; determination has been immoderate capitalist interest astir narrowing margins, too.

Either way, the brace are present said to beryllium successful talks with Fortress Investment Group – itself present bulk owned by Mubadala Investment Company, which is itself owned by the authorities of Abu Dhabi – to unafraid financing for a buyout astatine astir $15 per share, which would worth Grindr astatine astir $3 billion. Shares jumped pursuing the report.

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