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| On the podcast: Autonomous finance's obstacles and opportunities | | In the past few years, VCs have poured tens of millions of dollars into startups that use AI to help consumers spend wisely. But the push to back companies that let robots make financial decisions creates both possibility and risk.
On the latest episode of "In Visible Capital," PitchBook emerging tech analysts talk about what the future may hold for autonomous finance. Topics discussed include: - Why humans are ill-suited to making sound financial decisions and how AI can help.
- Why gaining the trust of consumers who are willing to release a trove of personal financial information remains an obstacle.
- What the future could look like for autonomous financial regulations and why many fintechs are still operating in a gray area.
| | | | | | | | | | Blackstone, Star Entertainment compete for Australia's biggest casino | |  | | Star Entertainment and Blackstone are both betting big on Crown Resorts. (Daniel Pockett/Getty Images) | | | Blackstone and Star Entertainment have entered a bidding war over Crown Resorts, Australia's largest hotel and casino. - Star Entertainment, an operator of three hotel and casino complexes in Australia, has made a bid to merge with Crown, valuing the company's stock at more than A$14 per share. Star is offering 2.68 of its shares in exchange for every Crown share, and a A$12.50 cash option per share for up to 25% of Crown's shares on issue.
- If successful, the merger would create a A$12 billion (around $9.4 billion) Australian casino giant.
- Blackstone has increased its initial bid for Crown from $6.2 billion to $6.5 billion, or A$12.35 per share. The firm, which owns The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, purchased a roughly 10% stake in Crown in April 2020 from Melco Resorts & Entertainment for some $360 million.
- Shares in both Star and Crown climbed over 7% following news of Star's offer to combine the two companies.
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| A message from Velocity Global | | |
| Help your portfolio companies overcome global expansion obstacles | | VC investors and their portfolio companies need an international growth strategy that supports their high-growth trajectory and maximizes ROI.
Download Velocity Global's new infographic, Venture Capital: Set Your Portcos Up for a Successful Global Expansion, to explore different global hiring scenarios, and identify the difference between a vendor and a strategic global expansion partner to avoid costly mistakes. Scenarios cover: - Managing benefits for international teams
- Protecting intellectual property
- Navigating value-added tax
- Encountering country-specific issues
Get the infographic | | | | | | | |
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| Can VCs use data to discover the next unicorn founder? | | It's easy to picture the classic unicorn founder as a stereotypical 25- to 34-year-old out of Stanford or Facebook (or some accelerator like Y Combinator). - But the reality is that most of the star entrepreneurs coming into prominence show none of those kinds of attributes, according to a unique dataset amassed by Ali Tamaseb, a venture capitalist with DCVC.
- In a new book called "Super Founders" due out May 18, Tamaseb's data calls into question whether the big VC firms really know what to look for in their quest to find the great company-builders of the future. Tamaseb collected a trove of proprietary data about companies founded between 2005 and 2018 (partly relying on PitchBook's platform), helping to paint a picture of promising founders using larger, less biased samples while avoiding anecdotes or widely held archetypes.
- "The biggest signal I observed in the data is that a bunch of things don't matter, like age and university and being technical," Tamaseb says. "What matters is having a history of having generated value, even if that value was small."
| | | | | | | | | | With many families no longer able to afford tuition, Catholic schools across the US are losing students at record rates, and hundreds are closing. [The Wall Street Journal]
A coastal development near Athens is getting ready to move forward. But with prices beyond the reach of most Greeks, the country is hoping to attract foreign investors. [Bloomberg]
Toy giant Mattel is giving Barbie and other toys a makeover. And not in the way you might think. [Forbes] | | | | | |
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| | Since yesterday, the PitchBook Platform added: | | 454 Deals | 1821 People | 485 Companies | 31 Funds | | | | | | |
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| 2009 Vintage North American Venture Funds | | | | | | |
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| | | TPG Capital has announced that co-chief executive Jon Winkelried will serve as the firm's sole CEO, and that co-founder Jim Coulter has become executive chairman of the firm. Before joining TPG in 2015, Winkelried served as president and co-chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs. | | | | | |
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| Gojek raises $300M before Tokopedia merger | | | Indonesian super app maker Gojek has raised $300 million from wireless carrier Telkomsel, building on a $150 million investment that Telkomsel made in the company last year. Gojek plans to merge with ecommerce company Tokopedia to form a new company called GoTo. Gojek was reportedly valued at $10 billion last year. | | | | | | | | Laronde launches with $50M from Flagship Pioneering | | | Biotech startup Laronde has launched with $50 million in capital from VC firm Flagship Pioneering. Cambridge, Mass.-based Laronde, which was founded in 2017 by Flagship Labs, is creating an engineered form of RNA capable of producing therapeutic proteins in the human body. Flagship Pioneering has also backed companies including mRNA vaccine maker Moderna and cellular engineering specialist Sana Biotechnology. | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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| PE-backed Outdoor Living Supply adds on natural stone company | | | | | | | | | The Jordan Company does engineered plastics deal | | | The Jordan Company has acquired Spartech, a St. Louis-based manufacturer of engineered plastics and packaging products. Providence, R.I.-based Nautic Partners, which purchased Spartech in 2019, will remain a minority shareholder of the company. | | | | | | | | TA Associates backs Radiant Logic | | | TA Associates has made a growth investment in Radiant Logic, a Novato, Calif.-based creator of identity integration and unification software. Cybersecurity industry veteran Joe Sander will become the company's CEO, while founding CEO Michel Prompt will remain with the company in an advisory role. | | | | | | | | OTPP strikes latest electricity deal | | | Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Board has agreed to acquire electricity transmission company Evoltz from TPG Capital, which launched the Rio de Janeiro-based business in 2018. The news comes after Ontario Teachers' purchased a 40% stake in Finland-based electricity company Caruna earlier this year. | | | | | |
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| Vice in talks to go public at $3B valuation via SPAC | | | Vice has engaged in discussions with blank-check company 7GC Co. & Holdings in a deal that would take the digital media company public at a valuation of nearly $3 billion, including debt, The Wall Street Journal reported. A previous CNBC report said Vice has begun making plans for a roadshow to entice PIPE investors to enable the IPO. TPG Capital has backed Vice since investing $450 million in the business in 2017 at a $5.7 billion valuation, according to a PitchBook estimate. | | | | | | | | Michael Klein, Sam Altman cut SPAC IPO size | | | AltC Acquisition Corp. is now looking to raise $400 million after originally seeking to raise $1 billion in its IPO, according to SEC filings. The SPAC is sponsored by former Y Combinator president Sam Altman and Michael Klein, a serial SPAC sponsor perhaps best known for taking Lucid Motors public. The reduction in the offering amount comes amid increased regulatory scrutiny of SPAC deals and a widespread belief that there are too many SPACs chasing too few potential targets. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Online mortgage lender Better plans to merge with special-purpose acquisition company Aurora Acquisition Corp., The Wall Street Journal reported. The deal is said to value Better at $7 billion pre-money. SoftBank is a backer of Better and could invest another $1.3 billion as part of a $1.5 billion PIPE round that would come alongside the SPAC deal. New York-based Better was valued at $4 billion last year, according to PitchBook data. | | | | | | | | Plus to go public in SPAC deal | | | Self-driving truck startup Plus has struck a deal to merge with blank-check company Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V. The deal values the combined company at $3.3 billion and is expected to provide Plus with $500 million in cash. Bay Area-based Plus plans to begin production of its autonomous truck system through a partnership with Chinese truck manufacturer FAW as soon as this year. | | | | | |
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"M&A will likely continue to surge in sectors such as tech and healthcare. Both proved resilient in the downturn, and companies in these sectors have record-setting war chests of cash. Manufacturing is a sector to watch as fallout from the pandemic reshapes the competitive balance in the coming years."
Source: PitchBook's Q1 2021 Global M&A Report | | | | | |
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