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Podcast: The Deal
Episode: Activist Investing Today: Columbia’s Coffee on WeWork, Softbank and IPO Ratchets
Description: Retail investors are being harmed by essentially secret IPO protection deals still-private companies are reaching with mutual funds. At least that’s the view of Columbia Law School professor John Coffee, who spoke with The Deal for its Activist Investing Today podcast about so-called IPO ratchets — contracts some mutual funds are receiving entitling them to additional shares in the event an initial public offering falls below the valuation reflected in the final private equity round. In a wide-ranging conversation, Coffee explained that public investors can suffer dilution while the IPO itself is at risk of becoming overpriced. He argued adeq...