David Ehrlich at TheDeal writes more about the Spark IPO filing:
The Beverly Hills, Calif.-based owner of AmericanSingles.com, JDate.com and CollegeLuv.com filed Thursday for a $75 million IPO of American Depositary Shares. The offering from Spark Networks plc, formerly MatchNet plc, is underwritten by Piper Jaffray & Co. as lead manager and sole book-runner and Thomas Weisel Partners LLC and ThinkEquity Partners LLC acting as co-managers. The company withdrew plans for an offering in August 2004, citing a faltering market for Internet-related IPOs, but said at the time that it would reconsider a U.S. offering in 2005 if market conditions improved. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Spark said it plans to use the money from the IPO to expand marketing efforts and for general corporate purposes, including a potential rescission offer. Spark used Los Angeles-based Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP as counsel, with London’s Steptoe & Johnson for advice under English law. Latham & Watkins LLP, also based in Los Angeles, acted as counsel for the underwriters. The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the symbol SPRK. It already trades Global Depositary Shares on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under MHJG, which closed at €7.80 ($10.47) a GDS on Wednesday. New York hedge fund Tiger Technology Management LLC holds a 26.7% stake in Spark.
Did you catch the part about the rescission offer? A rescission offer is basically the cancellation of a previous exercise of an incentive stock option, generally because of a substantial drop in the price of the stock acquired through the exercise. Rescission results in the employee surrendering stock in exchange for money that was paid for the stock. Google went through a similar situation before it’s IPO.
