There are common stock, common options, and as many as three to five different layers of preferred stock, each with a specific liquidation preference.

Private companies typically have capitalization structures that are very complex. There are many reasons why private-private is so difficult, but allow me to highlight three specific challenges that seem quite prevalent. Public-public, and public-private are actually much easier to consummate. And of course, we are afforded the advantage of greater scale.ĭespite that there may be many obvious reasons for any two companies to combine, most private-private mergers (where both companies are private entities) never come to fruition.

There are many synergies – different geographic strengths, different core customer bases, and different product strengths. As Benchmark is a large institutional investor in Grubhub, we were actively involved in the merger process, and we are quite excited about the potential of the two companies coming together. Today, Seamless and Grubhub announced the signing of a definitive agreement to merge two of the nation’s premier services for ordering takeout online.

Is grubhub and seamless the same