特朗普媒体合并获得投资者批准，为特朗普带来潜在的意外之财
【中美创新时报2024年3月23日讯】（记者温友平编译）周五（22日），股东们投票决定让前总统唐纳德·特朗普的媒体公司上市，这一拖延已久的举措将向股市投资者开放“真相社会”（Truth Social）的所有者，并授予特朗普价值数十亿美元的股份，他可以用它来偿还法律债务。《华盛顿邮报》记者德鲁·哈威尔（Drew Harwell）对此作了下述报道。
“数字世界获取”（Digital World Acquisition ）的投资者周五投票授权这家特殊目的收购公司 (SPAC) 与特朗普媒体科技集团合并，作为避免更传统的公开发行流程的一部分。
特朗普将拥有该公司约 60% 的股份，按 Digital World 目前的股价计算，该公司的价值约为 33 亿美元。Digital World 在向美国证券交易委员会提交的文件中表示，他和其他投资者可以通过与股票表现挂钩的“收益”条款赚取更多数千万股股票。
通过此次合并，Digital World 最初从投资者处筹集的特朗普媒体（Trump Media）净额将达到 3 亿美元。特朗普的盟友和公司高管还将获得新公司的大量股票，价值可能高达数百万美元。但股票市场上的交易也将使公司受到更多公众监督，股价的任何下跌都会影响这些股份的价值。
批评人士称，特朗普媒体是一只估值超过 60 亿美元的“模因股”，他们认为与其财务前景不同步。 Digital World 在向 SEC 提交的文件中表示，特朗普媒体去年前 9 个月亏损 4900 万美元，但收入为 340 万美元。
消息传出后，Digital World 股价下跌约 5%，至 40 美元左右。
合并协议中的禁售条款还将阻止特朗普和其他主要投资者在六个月内出售其股票，除非他获得合并后公司董事会的豁免。
这可能会限制特朗普利用这笔意外之财来帮助偿还他在法律判决中所欠的数亿美元的能力。特朗普的律师表示，特朗普没有足够的现金来获得保证金，以推迟纽约欺诈案价值 4.64 亿美元判决的执行。如果他在周一之前没有交纳保释金，该州总检察长可能会采取行动没收他的银行账户、房地产和其他资产。
美国证券交易委员会的一份文件显示，任何禁售权变更或豁免都将由合并后公司的董事会决定，该董事会将由特朗普的盟友储备。该委员会的提名人包括特朗普的长子小唐纳德·特朗普； 特朗普的前贸易代表罗伯特·E·莱特希泽 (Robert E. Lighthizer)； 琳达·麦克马洪 (Linda McMahon)，特朗普领导下的小企业管理局 (Small Business Administration) 负责人；以及曾在特朗普国家安全委员会任职的卡什·帕特尔（Kash Patel）。
前共和党众议员德文·努涅斯将继续担任特朗普媒体首席执行官。
合并后的公司将被称为“特朗普媒体”，最早可能于周一开始在纳斯达克证券交易所上市，股票代码为特朗普姓名首字母缩写“DJT”。这个符号也被用于特朗普唯一的另一家上市公司特朗普酒店及赌场度假村，该公司在不到十年的时间里就崩溃为低价股，并于 2004 年申请破产。
Truth Social已成为特朗普主要的网络扩音器和特朗普支持者的聚集地。尽管该平台作为 Twitter 的替代品推出，但仍保留了一小部分在线受众。特朗普的“真相社会”账户拥有 670 万粉丝，而 2021 年他在 Twitter 上的粉丝数量为 8800 万。
特朗普周四在投票前在《真相社会》帖子中表示，“《真相社会》是我的声音，也是美国的真实声音！！！ MAGA2024！！！”
2021 年 1 月 6 日美国国会大厦骚乱后，特朗普被推特和其他社交网络踢出，真人秀《学徒》的两名前参赛者向特朗普提出了“言论自由”媒体和互联网业务的想法。
此后，由于美国证券交易委员会和司法部的调查，该公司与 Digital World 的合并提案多年来一直面临障碍和拖延，美国证券交易委员会同意支付 1800 万美元和解，而美国司法部则调查了涉及数字世界投资者内幕交易和洗钱指控。
两位知情人士告诉《华盛顿邮报》，去年夏天，当交易的确定性受到质疑时，特朗普询问亿万富翁埃隆·马斯克是否想收购 Truth Social。尽管两人此后一直保持着沟通，但该提议毫无进展。
最近，该交易卷入了一场法律大战，在三个州提起了四起诉讼，涉及特朗普媒体、数字世界、联合创始人安迪·利廷斯基和韦斯·莫斯，以及数字世界的前首席执行官帕特里克·奥兰多。
特朗普媒体和数字世界的律师表示，奥兰多去年被解雇，但仍控制着数字世界最大的创始投资者 Arc Global Investments II，他在周五投票前拒绝投票支持合并，这可能会危及该交易，在本周的一场诉讼中，试图迫使他投票。奥兰多在周五的股东电话会议上只做了简短发言，没有就他的投票方式发表进一步评论。
Digital World 的超过 40 万散户投资者包括特朗普的支持者和希望从该交易的关注中获利的投机者。一位穿着海盗服装、自称“DWAC 船长”的投资者直播了 Rumble 的股东投票，并在宣布投票成功时响起了掌声。
“很多拥抱，”投资者、加拿大礼拜领袖查德·内多欣 (Chad Nedohin) 说。 “这是一场漫长、漫长的战斗。”
题图：2024年1月，前总统唐纳德·特朗普准备在华盛顿华尔道夫酒店发表讲话。 (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
附原英文报道：
Trump Media merger wins investor approval, netting Trump potential windfall
By Drew Harwell Washington Post,Updated March 22, 2024
Shareholders voted Friday to take former president Donald Trump’s media company public, a long-delayed move that will open the owner of Truth Social to stock-market investors and grant Trump a stake worth billions of dollars he could use to pay down his legal debts.
The vote Friday by investors in Digital World Acquisition authorized the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group as part of a process that will avoid a more traditional public offering.
Trump will own about 60 percent of the company, which at Digital World’s current share price would be worth about $3.3 billion. He and other investors could earn tens of millions more shares through an “earnout” provision tied to the stock’s performance, Digital World said in an SEC filing.
The merger will net Trump Media $300 million that Digital World initially raised from investors. Trump’s allies and company executives will also be granted bundles of shares in the new company that could be worth millions of dollars. But trading on the stock market will also open the company to more public scrutiny, and any drops in share prices would affect the value of those stakes.
Critics have said Trump Media is a “meme stock” with a more than $6 billion valuation they say is out of sync with its financial outlook. Trump Media lost $49 million in the first nine months of last year and brought in $3.4 million in revenue, Digital World said in an SEC filing.
Digital World’s share price slid roughly 5 percent on the news, to about $40.
A lockup provision in the merger agreement will also prevent Trump and other major investors from selling their shares for six months unless he is granted a waiver by the post-merger company’s board.
That could limit Trump’s ability to use the windfall to help pay off the hundreds of millions of dollars he owes in legal judgments. Trump does not have the cash to secure a bond that would delay enforcement of the $464 million judgment in a New York fraud case, his lawyers said. If he does not post a bond by Monday, the state’s attorney general could move to seize his bank accounts, real estate, and other assets.
Any lockup change or waiver will be decided by the post-merger company’s board, which will be stocked with Trump allies, an SEC filing shows. The board’s nominees include Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr.; Trump’s former trade representative, Robert E. Lighthizer; Linda McMahon, who headed the Small Business Administration under Trump; and Kash Patel, who served on Trump’s National Security Council.
Devin Nunes, the former Republican representative, will stay on as Trump Media’s chief executive.
The post-merger company, which will be called Trump Media, could begin trading on the Nasdaq stock exchange as soon as Monday under the ticker symbol of Trump’s initials, DJT. That symbol was also used for Trump’s only other public company, Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts, which collapsed into a penny stock in less than a decade and filed for bankruptcy in 2004.
Truth Social has become Trump’s main online megaphone and a gathering place for Trump supporters. Though it launched as an alternative to Twitter, the platform retains a small fraction of its online audience. Trump’s Truth Social account has 6.7 million followers, compared to the 88 million he had on Twitter in 2021.
Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday before the vote, “TRUTH SOCIAL IS MY VOICE, AND THE REAL VOICE OF AMERICA!!! MAGA2024!!!”
Two former contestants from his reality show “The Apprentice” proposed the idea of a “free speech” media and internet business to Trump after he was kicked from Twitter and other social networks following the US Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021.
The company’s merger proposal with Digital World has faced years of hurdles and delays since then because of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which agreed to an $18 million settlement, and the Justice Department, which has probed insider-trading and money-laundering allegations involving Digital World investors.
Last summer, when the deal’s certainty was in doubt, Trump asked billionaire Elon Musk whether he wanted to buy Truth Social, two people with knowledge of the conversation told The Washington Post. The proposal went nowhere, though the two men have communicated since.
More recently, the deal has been embroiled in a legal battle royale, with four lawsuits in three states involving Trump Media, Digital World, the cofounders Andy Litinsky and Wes Moss, and Digital World’s former chief executive Patrick Orlando.
Orlando, who was fired as chief last year but remains in control of Digital World’s biggest founding investor Arc Global Investments II, had refused to vote in support of the merger before Friday’s vote, potentially imperiling the deal, attorneys for Trump Media and Digital World said in a lawsuit this week seeking to force his vote. Orlando spoke only briefly on the shareholder call Friday and did not offer further comment on how he voted.
Digital World’s more than 400,000 retail investors included supporters of Trump and speculators hoping to cash in on the deal’s attention. One investor, dressed in a pirate costume and calling himself “Captain DWAC,” live-streamed the shareholder vote on Rumble and played sounds of applause when the successful vote was announced.
“Lots of hugs,” said the investor, Chad Nedohin, a worship leader in Canada. “This has been a long, long fight.”
