BuzzFeed shareholders will vote today to take the company public via a merger with a special-purpose-acquisition company, or SPAC. The deal is expected to close Friday.
By Monday, the company could start trading under the stock ticker BZFD. Shares are expected to trade for around $10. Jonah Peretti, BuzzFeed’s CEO, has already sent out invitations for the ringing of the bell on the floor of NASDAQ and for a celebratory dinner at the Indian restaurant Sona, where he will perhaps chow down on $38 green pepper halibut and think about the some $64 million in stock options he holds and the fact that he will retain control of the company he founded. But not everyone is in the mood to uncork Champagne.
BuzzFeed News employees tell New York that its 61-member unit is (digitally) walking off the job this morning for a 24-hour period, even as shareholders get ready to vote. “There is no future of BuzzFeed without the workers, no product for them to take public,” says Addy Baird, a reporter and chair of…
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