The combined company will operate as Pico, which will be listed on NASDAQ, and is expected to have up to $426m in cash, upon closing
Pico to go public through merger with FTAC Athena. (Credit: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.)
Pico has agreed to merge with FTAC Athena Acquisition, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), to become a publicly listed company.
The transaction values Pico at an enterprise value of around $1.4bn, and an implied equity value of $1.75bn, on a pro forma basis.
It includes $250m in gross proceeds from FTAC Athena cash in trust and $200m in gross proceeds from a fully committed private placement in public equity from several investors.
The investors include Golden Gate Capital and Wellington Management, which will close concurrently with the business combination.
The merger has been unanimously approved by both parties’ boards of directors. It is expected to close later in this year, subject to certain customary closing conditions.
Upon closing of the business combination with SPAC, the combined company will operate as Pico and will be listed on NASDAQ.
The combined company is expected to have up to $426m in cash, with existing Pico equity holders, including investors and employees, are expected to hold nearly 72% stake.
FTAC Athena board chairman Betsy Cohen said: “Jarrod, Frank, and the outstanding Pico leadership team have deep domain expertise and have built a company that delivers exceptional value to their global commercial customers.
“Pico is at the frontier of modernizing the financial ecosystem by providing global connectivity and market insight solutions for its customers and we look forward to working together in order to build long-term value for our stockholders.”
As part of the transaction, Pico will continue with the existing management team, led by founder, chairman, co-CEO Jarrod Yuster and co-CEO Frank Troise.
Established in 2009, Pico offers financial services trading cloud infrastructure with exchange connectivity spanning 45 data centres across markets in the Americas, Europe and Asia.
PicoNet, the company’s global, low-latency and fully redundant network, is designed to interconnect the world’s major financial data centres, including all major public cloud providers.
Pico’s global infrastructure and data services, in combination with its artificial intelligence (AI) solution Corvil Analytics, is said to provide a complete suite of trading solutions to its clients.
The company is supported by Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, UBS, Nomura, DRW Venture Capital, CE Innovation Capital and EDBI.
Pico chairman, founder and co-CEO Jarrod Yuster said: “Twenty-five years ago trading was in-person or over the phone, localized in each country. The world we live in today is electronic and multi-asset class; markets are global but fragmented, producing vast amounts of data that continue to grow.
“Through our global technology platform serving the financial industry, we modernize and simplify complex infrastructure, provide global data and electronic access to all markets for our clients in a seamless manner.
“We sit at the centre of a complex ecosystem of major market participants, global market centres and technology partners. Our clients are important and sophisticated financial institutions who rely on Pico for mission-critical global markets infrastructure.”