Grindr’s majority owners are scrambling to take the LGBTQ+ dating app private after a stock decline triggered a personal financial crisis, according to a report from Semafor.
The owners in question are Raymond Zage, a former hedge fund manager and U.S. expat now based in Singapore, and James Lu, a Chinese-American entrepreneur and former Amazon and Baidu exec. Together they led the 2020 acquisition of Grindr from Chinese ownership for over $600 million, then took the app public in 2022 through a blank-check merger.
Reportedly, Zage and Lu, who together control more than 60% of Grindr, pledged nearly all their shares as collateral for personal loans from a unit of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek. After Grindr began a slide at the end of September, those loans became undercollateralized (worth less than the debt), so the Temasek unit seized and sold some of the shares last week.
Grindr’s stock slide appears disconnected from business fundamentals – profits were up 25% in the second quarter, Semafor notes, though it has seen some executive turnover; there has been some investor concern about narrowing margins, too.
Either way, the pair are now said to be in talks with Fortress Investment Group – itself now majority owned by Mubadala Investment Company, which is itself owned by the government of Abu Dhabi – to secure financing for a buyout at around $15 per share, which would value Grindr at around $3 billion. Shares jumped following the report.
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