Ex-Viacom CEO Marc DeBevoise to launch $265 million IPO
October 22 Reuters - Argus Capital, a special purpose acquisition company SPAC, led by former ViacomCBS and CBS executives targeting media, entertainment and sport investments, is expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ Wednesday seeking to raise up to $265 million.
It aims to participate in the transaction-making frenzy which defined media industry this year.
Argus, led by Marc DeBevoise, who ran CBS prior to its merger with Viacom, and Joseph Ianniello, most recently the chief executive officer of ViacomCBS Digital filing with the SEC in July 2007.
The listing comes at a time when the broader SPAC market was weighed down by saturated pressure and heightened demand, with the majority of listed SPACs below their initial public offering prices.
In an interview on Tuesday, DeBevoise described the company's acquisition targets as tech-driven media with billions of dollars of enterprise value, including spin-offs from conglomerates and other companies.
From the explosion of devices and connectivity, to streaming become mainstream and impacting traditional models all of these changes have created a lot of opportunities in our space, DeBevoise told Reuters.
Special purpose acquisition vehicles, or SPACs, are shell companies that raise funds through an initial public offering to take a private company public via a merger at a later date.
SPACs have emerged as an alternative to public IPO for companies, providing a path to going public with less regulatory scrutiny and more certainty over the valuation achieved and funds raised.
They have become attractive financial vehicles in the media industry, where scale is often necessary to survive. In June BuzzFeed agreed with Th Avenue Partners to a merger, among other recent transactions, in June, which would be valued at $1.5 billion net of cash.
Last month the publisher of Forbes magazine said it was going public through a merger with a Hong Kong-based SPAC in a deal which values the combined entity at $630 million.