Southeast Asia’s largest ride-hailing and delivery company, Grab, which debuted on the Nasdaq on Thursday, saw its shares slide more than 20% after it merged with a blank cheque company to reach a record $40 billion.
Grab’s shares shot up as much as 21% minutes after listing before trading 23% lower at $8.51 by 18:34 GMT.
The back-door listing on the Nasdaq represents the echelon for the nine-year-old Singaporean company, which began as a ride-sharing app and now operates in 465 cities in eight nations, with various services focused on food delivery, payments, insurance and investment products.
Grab kicked off the largest U.S. listing of a Southeast Asian company with a bell-ringing event in Singapore hosted by representatives of Nasdaq and Grab.
CEO Tan and Tan Hooi Ling founded the company after winning a Harvard Business School venture competition in 2011.
CEO Tan, 39, transformed his start-up into a regional company offering a range of services after launching it as a taxi app in Malaysia in 2012 and later moving its headquarters to Singapore.
Together with Grab co-founder and President Ming Maa, he will hold 60.4% of the voting rights but only 3.3% stake with them.
The listing follows Grab’s agreement last April to merge with U.S. tech investor Altimeter Capital Management SPAC, raising $4.5 billion, including $750 million from Altimeter.
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