The Nightcap from SPAC Track

Urban mobility company Lime said on Friday it had raised $523 million from investors to scale up production of its latest e-scooters and e-bikes and its top executive said the startup is aiming for a stock market listing in 2022.

The San Francisco-based company said the money it had raised from convertible debt and term loan financing included fresh capital from ride-hailing company Uber, which became an investor in 2020. The funding round was “significantly oversubscribed,” Lime Chief Executive Officer Wayne Ting told Reuters.

“I think it’s a recognition that Lime is now the undisputed leader in this space,” Ting said. “It’s a real milestone that shows investor confidence that Lime will be going public and we’ll use this as a launching pad to go public next year.”

Ting told Reuters that depending on market conditions, he was hoping for a listing in the summer of 2022. He said he was “agnostic” as to whether the company will pursue a more traditional initial public share offering (IPO), or opt for a listing via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Santa Monica-based electric scooter rental company Bird is merging with Switchback II Corp, a SPAC, and will start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday under the ticker symbol “BRDS” in a deal valuing the scooter startup at $2.3 billion.

Monex Group Inc. surged by its daily limit after the Japanese financial firm announced plans to list its U.S. online trading subsidiary through a deal with Michael Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd.

In a statement after the market close Thursday, Monex said its wholly-owned unit TradeStation Group Inc. plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange in the first half of 2022 following a merger with Quantum FinTech Acquisition Corp (QFTA). The deal puts TradeStation at an implied pro forma enterprise value of $1.43 billion at closing.

The special purpose acquisition company will receive $50 million from each of the co-anchor investors, Monex and Galaxy Digital LP, a unit of Galaxy Digital Holdings. Monex will own about 80% of TradeStation at closing. The Japanese firm’s stock jumped 20% Friday, the most since April 2018.

Monex acquired TradeStation -- a platform for trading stocks, ETFs, derivatives and cryptocurrencies -- in 2011 for about $400 million. Canada-listed Galaxy, which was founded by billionaire and former Goldman partner Novogratz, had $2.3 billion in assets under management as of Sept. 30.