On the way to the collection of $ 1.1 billion in a first public offer this week, Stablecoin Issueer Circle Internet Group Inc. has proven why cryptocurrency companies are lucrative customers for the best law firms in the world.
Davis Polk and Wardwell advised the company on its IPO before the company’s shares increased 168% Thursday in their first day of negotiation. Legal costs for the agreement were $ 7.3 million, according to a company depositing with Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States.
Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom advised the subscribers in the agreement, which was strongly overwritten, helping to establish the increase in the course of the action. According to Bloomberg, stocks at the IPO of $ 31 increased up to $ 103.75 before settling at $ 83.23 at the closing of the negotiation, according to Bloomberg data. Trading gave Circle a market value of $ 18.5 billion.
The success of Circle shows how cryptographic companies have become attractive customers for the main law firms that once considered digital currencies with suspicion. The company’s legal costs increased by $ 17.6 million in 2024, after an increase of $ 5.2 million in 2023, according to dry deposits. Circle also pays millions of legal expenses in a major dispute with its former investment bank.
A litany of best law firms billed these costs. Wilmerhale, Davis Polk, Wilson Sonini and Goodwin Procter advised Circle on business affairs, according to public announcements and advertisements of lawyers.
Wilmerhale earlier this year advised the company an acquisition of Hashnote Holdings LLC, a platform of digital assets which gives us coins.
Wilson Sonini advised the company to launch its Circle Payments Network network this year, which aims to connect financial institutions to allow cross -border payments of regulated stables.
Wilson Sonini also advised the company in dispute, including a case filed earlier this year by a client who said that the company had wrongly destroyed $ 1 million from its stablecoin. A federal judge rejected the case in favor of Circle earlier this year, and Wilson Sonini represents the company on appeal.
Davis Polk in 2023 advised Circle on its agreement to associate with naked Crypto Ltda., Which extended access to its stablecoin to Brazilian customers. Davis Polk has become a well -known company in cryptographic space because it helps Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. To launch a series of funds negotiated with Crypto.com.
Goodwin advised the company in its previous plan to make public through a merger with an acquisition company for special purposes in 2021. This agreement, which finally evaluated the circle at $ 9 billion, failed. Goodwin had advised the company “Since its creation”, in particular on a fundraising of 440 million dollars in 2021, Reuters reportedand also on a $ 400 million in fundraising in 2022.
The Jones Day in 2023 filed a memory of Amicus for a circle in a dispute between the Sec and Binance Holdings Ltd., which argued that the dry lack of authority to regulate payment payment offers.
Banking dispute
In a dispute with its former financial investment bank Technology Partners LP, Circle has kept the High Power Litch Boutage Boutage Boutage.
Represented by Sullivan & Cromwell, FT Partners continued Circle, alleging that it is due at least tens of millions of dollars in transaction costs linked to the company’s capital increases, and potentially, the IPO this week. The bank maintains that the company has wrongly interrupted it to avoid paying expensive costs which were assessed when Circle was struggling in 2020.
The fee agreement would have authoritarian the FT partners at 7% of any capital raised by the company. For a business sale, the investment bank should be climbing costs depending on the size of the sale, ranging from 3% of $ 400 million to produce up to 10% of the product of more than a billion dollars, according to the trial.
In a letter ending the circle at the heart of the complaint of FT partners, the director general of the company, Jeremy Allaire, copied the partner of Quinn Emanuel, Michael Carlinsky.
Circle said that in his dry, the depositor “strongly contest the request for partners for partners for all costs”.
However, the company has acknowledged that the dispute could offer it to payments in cash or equity to FT partners which “can be substantial”. He may also be forced to pay the “significant” investment bank costs for future capital increases or business sales transactions, including the IPO itself, said the deposit of the SEC.
The company said it had paid legal fees of almost $ 9.5 million last year linked to the dispute of FT partners and other regulations related to its inherited companies. He paid $ 1.9 million such costs in three months this year.
