(The Armchair Trader)—Chicago casino Bally’s backed away from its original plans to launch a share scheme targeted at minorities, following a legal challenge from the Liberty Justice Centre.
Bally’s had originally registered an IPO which was only available to investors that met Chicago’s definition of a minority. The Liberty Justice Center argued that Chicago’s government violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.
Bally’s Casino is planning to offer a $250m IPO for its $1.7m casino and resort. As part of its deal with the city, it planned to provide a 25% equity stake for women and minority investors.
The IPO was challenged in court by Mark Glennon, with the Liberty Justice Centre filing the suit on his behalf. The IPO has now been restructured to offer preference to residents of Chicago and the state of Illinois, regardless of race or gender.
“No one should be excluded from participating in our economy on the basis of their race or sex” said Reilly Stephens, Senior Counsel at the Liberty Justice Center. “We are glad to see Bally’s new offering allows the people of Chicago to invest in one of the city’s premier projects without discrimination or exclusion.”
The IPO has also been facing some other problems, including missing an SEC deadline. There is a private share sale ongoing along with the high profile IPO, which is valued at just under $200m.
Republic Digital’s SPAC raises over $300m
The SPAC is back it seems, at least in New York. Joseph Naggar, CEO of digital investment firm Republic Digital, listed a new cash shell, called Republic Digital Acquisition, which has raised over $300m. The SPAC is targeting an acquisition in the fintech, software or crypto worlds.
The cash shell was listed on NASDAQ. Its original target raise was $250m, which was then upsized to $264 because of demand. But the final listing surpassed even this, at over $300m. The IPO was a shot in the arm for Wall Street, which has been struggling with negative investor sentiment since Donald Trump embarked on his controversial tariffs program.
Part of the success of the listing is being attributed to a more benevolent regulatory climate for digital assets in the US.
Republic Digital itself is a fairly diversified digital assets firm with its fingers in lots of pies. Its offerings include primary and secondary market digital assets fund raising, venture capital, Web3 advisory, tokenisation and a broker-dealer operation.
Ant Group looks at Hong Kong for IPO
China’s Ant Group is exploring the possibility of listing Ant International, its overseas arm, on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is in discussions with the local regulator. Ant is the fintech group founded by Jack Ma which operates China’s highly successful Alipay payments app.
Readers may recall that Alibaba’s projected listing of Ant Group in Shanghai in 2020 was called off amidst an anti-trust investigation. This led to a $1 billion fine for Alibaba.
Ant is understood to be exploring the possibility of a financial holding company license. Apart from its already successful position in the Chinese digital payments space, Ant is also regarded as a front-runner in the development of AI innovation in China. Any move to IPO part of its empire in Hong Kong will be closely watched.
A solid performance from Hong Kong stocks since the start of the year has re-ignited interest in the exchange, especially from China-listed firms which can look at H-share listings in HK. In particular, investors in Asia are excited about the prospects for a CATL listing this year, which could be valued at over $5bn – CATL is currently listed in Shenzhen, with a valuation there of over $140bn.