Aurora Acquisition announced that its shareholders voted in favor of the business combination with home ownership platform Better.
The closing is anticipated by Aug. 22. Better Home & Finance Holding stock and warrants would then begin trading on the Nasdaq under the symbols BETR and BETRW.
Neither the press release announcing the vote nor a subsequent 8-K filing mentioned share redemptions, if any.
The $6.9 billion deal was announced in May 2021. Since then, the companies have hit a few bumps in the road.
Both parties faced a lawsuit in 2021 over the deal’s lock-up positions. Better acquired U.K.-based startup Property Partner in September 2021. Later that same month, Better’s CEO laid off 900 employees via Zoom, triggering a public relations backlash. More layoffs followed in May 2022. Then, in July 2022, another lawsuit. Better CEO Vishal Garg allegedly misled investors in his effort to keep them on board with his plans to take the company public, an ex-executive said in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.
In December of that year, Aurora revised the merger agreement to replace the SPAC’s cash in trust and PIPE with bridge financing and convertible notes. The retooled agreement replaced the initial $1.78 billion of proposed financing from Aurora and SB Northstar, which is a fund managed by SB Management, a subsidiary of SoftBank ($1.5 billion PIPE and $278 million backstop of Aurora’s trust account share redemptions), with a $1.5 billion transaction in which all proceeds would go directly to Better’s balance sheet (i.e., no secondary purchase from existing Better shareholders) to accelerate growth. Read more.
