Former Barclays boss Bob Diamond is seeking to tackle TikTok as chair of a social media start-up that claims to be value greater than $3bn, regardless of income of solely $36mn and fewer than $1mn in money readily available final 12 months.
The brand new route for the financier comes after video platform Triller agreed an all-share takeover by AGBA, a small US-listed Hong Kong-based monetary companies platform with a controversial previous. Diamond, who has chaired AGBA since September, will serve in the identical capability on the mixed entity.
Shares in AGBA have leapt greater than 400 per cent for the reason that deal was introduced on April 18. In a press launch and presentation discussing the deal, AGBA stated Los Angeles-based Triller had been independently valued at $3.2bn and that the mixed group could be value $4bn “on a professional forma foundation”. Triller shareholders will maintain 80 per cent of the shares.
However based mostly on AGBA’s share value of 40 cents earlier than the deal information broke, the 407mn shares it can problem indicate Triller agreed to be acquired for $163mn. The Los Angeles-based group reported revenues of simply $36mn within the 9 months to September and losses of $131mn. AGBA reported a web lack of $49mn on revenues of $54mn final 12 months and money readily available of $1.8mn on the finish of December.
The Triller foray is a departure for Diamond, who as soon as commanded a financial institution with a trillion-dollar steadiness sheet. He resigned from Barclays in 2012 after the Libor rate-rigging scandal and has since stored a comparatively low profile.
Triller is a controversial — and minuscule — participant within the music business. The beginning-up in 2019 introduced investments from a variety of well-known artists together with Snoop Dogg, The Weeknd, Lil Wayne and Kendrick Lamar. Then chief govt Mike Lu made the daring declare that this “marks maybe essentially the most vital shift in music for the reason that creation of streaming”.
The corporate has tried to capitalise on the backlash in opposition to TikTok over its Chinese language possession, with Lu’s substitute Mahi de Silva in 2022 calling for each American to delete TikTok. Triller is now led by Bobby Sarnevesht.
However Triller was accused of inflating its customers numbers and has been sued by the most important music teams on the earth — Common and Sony — for failing to pay them royalties owed. Triller owed music firms $24mn on the finish of September however had solely $967,000 of money readily available, based on a January regulatory submitting, during which it reported it had raised $420mn.
Since Diamond’s departure from Barclays he has largely caught to dealing in monetary companies. Earlier this 12 months he merged the UK mid-market dealer, Panmure Gordon, with a rival. Panmure is held by means of Atlas Service provider Capital, his funding car.
Diamond declined to touch upon the merger of AGBA with Triller.
Atlas has been an adviser to AGBA, for $83,000 a month — the identical quantity Diamond is receiving as chair of the monetary companies platform.
Wing-Fai-Ng, group president of lossmaking AGBA who can be chief govt of the mixed group, advised the Monetary Occasions he had identified Diamond for greater than a decade and thought of him “like household”.
The Triller deal was introduced days earlier than President Joe Biden signed into legislation an initiative that may ban dominant video app TikTok from US app shops except its Chinese language guardian divests the enterprise.
AGBA, initially a particular function acquisition firm arrange by a Hong Kong enterprise, and which is domiciled within the British Virgin Islands, has agreed to redomicile within the US as a situation of the merger.
“We consider there’s a large alternative in social media, in video sharing popping out in the USA within the subsequent 12 months or so and we consider that Triller is by far and away the previous positioned firm to make the most of that,” Ng, a former funding banker, advised the FT.
Triller was billed as “a pioneering drive within the intersection of know-how, leisure and commerce leveraging superior AI” in an AGBA investor presentation explaining the deal that stated the platform had greater than 450mn client accounts.
Triller declined to debate its present buyers.
AGBA’s majority proprietor is managed by Taiwanese businessman Richard Tsai whose household based the Fubon Monetary empire. Tsai additionally holds a stake in Triller, based on regulatory filings.
AGBA got here into its present kind after it merged with troubled Convoy International following the Hong Kong funding adviser’s compelled delisting from the town’s inventory trade after failing to provide well timed accounts.
Its troubles stemmed from its position on the centre of a 2017 scandal within the metropolis dubbed the “Enigma community” which highlighted an internet of tightly-controlled cross-shareholdings in publicly listed firms within the territory. A number of former Convoy executives have been jailed for fraud in 2021.
The brand new firm started buying and selling within the US in November 2022.
