Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange platform, is planning to invest $200 million in Forbes and Magnum Opus business partnership, Forbes announced on Thursday.
In August 2021, the 104-year old magazine announced it had entered into a definitive business partnership agreement with Magnum Opus Acquisition Limited, a publicly-traded Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC).
According to Forbes, the partnership will help capitalise on its successful digital transformation through the usage of technology and data-driven insights to better engage audiences.
The $200 million investment from Binance will help Forbes forge ahead with its merger plan, expected to close in the first quarter of 2022. People familiar with the deal but declined to be identified have said Binance will replace half of $400 million commitments from institutional investors that Forbes announced in August last year as investors are said to be skeptical of SPAC and may pull the plug on Forbes and Magnum, Investors King has learnt.
The deal, as shocking as it is, is expected to further deepen cryptocurrency acceptance among institutional investors and showed cryptocurrency earnings are legit. This is the first known cryptocurrency mainstream investment and therefore, may have removed all doubts about the legality of the crypto space.
With the investment, Binance is now of the two largest owners of Forbes, a company that will be listed on the New York Stock exchange under ticker FRBS soon, stated the people with the knowledge of the deal.
In January 2022, Bloomberg ranked Changpeng Zhao, the Founder and CEO of Binance, as one of the world’s richest people with a net worth of $96 billion.
For people in the crypto space, this is a strategic move for Zhao, when it comes to Web 3.0. “This is the first step into a marketplace that has really high potential when it comes to adoption of Web 3.0-based tools,” said a person with knowledge of Binance’s strategy. “Our industry has seen a ton of growth and we think you’d have to be a fool to not position yourself in those sectors that are ripe for infrastructure investment.”
In 2014, 95 percent of Forbes’s stake was sold to Hong Kong-based Integrated Whale Media at a market value of $475 million.