Slack headquarters, 500 Howard St. in San Francisco. (Photo: Jason Doiy/ALM)Slack to Pay Goodwin $2.5M for Unconventional IPO, Latham Reps Advisers
Goodwin Procter advised San Francisco-based Slack Technologies Inc. on its direct listing, as financial advisers turned to Latham & Watkins.
June 20, 2019 at 06:57 PM
3 minute read
Slack Technologies Inc. is the latest beast to join the ranks of tech unicorns in the public market. And according to its updated S-1 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the popular work-messaging app expects to pay Goodwin Procter $2.5 million in legal fees for its direct-listing IPO.
San Francisco-based Slack made its trading debut Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock, under the symbol WORK, opened at $38.50, nearly 50% above the reference price of $26 set Wednesday, valuing the company at $19.5 billion.
Rather than a traditional IPO, Slack went public through an unusual method called a direct listing, making it the second-largest tech company to go that route. Last March, Spotify Technology SA, advised by Latham & Watkins, surprised Wall Street with its decision to list directly onto the New York Stock Exchange.
Goodwin is the principal legal adviser for Slack on the IPO, while the financial advisers and other associate financial advisers are represented by Latham & Watkins.
According to the filing, Slack also expects to pay about $22.1 million to its financial advisers and associate financial advisers. Slack said it engaged with Allen & Co. LLC, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley as financial advisers and several more firms as associate financial advisers to assist on the share sale process.
Slack's listing is led by Goodwin capital markets practice co-chair Richard Kline, who joined the firm in 2011 from Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. Kline has worked on several recent high-profile public offerings, representing JPMorgan in Lyft's $2.6 billion IPO last month and The Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley in Snap Inc.'s $3.4 billion IPO in 2017.
Also working with Kline on the listing was partner David Van Horne, who joined the firm in 2013 from Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian, and associate Sarah Axtell.
Leading Latham & Watkins' capital markets team are New York-based partners Greg Rodgers and Benjamin Cohen. Rodgers joined the firm in 1999 from White & Case, while Cohen was one of 31 Latham associates promoted to partner Jan. 1, 2018. Both were on the team that counseled Spotify on its direct listing last year. Also working with them on the deal were associates John Williams and Michelle Lu in Silicon Valley and Brittany Ruiz in New York.
As 2019 is shaping up to be a big year for tech IPOs, it has also been a busy time for the law firms that work on deals. Slack is part of a slew of tech companies to go public this year including Uber, Lyft, Zoom, Pinterest and PagerDuty, which together has generated $11.9 million in legal fees and expenses for the law firms advising those companies, according to SEC filings.
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