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(Bloomberg) — Bird Global Inc., the company that put electric scooters onto the sidewalks of major cities, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to sell itself two years after raising $414 million from shareholders.
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The Miami based company listed assets and liabilities of between $100 million and $500 million in its Chapter 11 petition. The filing in US Bankruptcy Court in Miami protects the company from creditors while it develops a plan to pay them off.
A group of Bird’s lenders have agreed to loan the scooter firm money to help pay for its reorganization and the company has a tentative deal to sell itself to a Canadian firm, according to court documents.
Bird went public during a wave of blank-check mergers in which a publicly traded shell company combines with an existing business in order to avoid the traditional requirements of an initial public offering. Since then, multiple firms that went public as special purpose acquisition companies have filed for bankruptcy.
Bird shares plunged 97% this year as scooter enthusiasm faded and in September the NYSE began delisting proceedings against the company after its average global market capitalization over a consecutive 30-trading-day period fell below at least $15 million.
The worldwide scooter market is changing as cities impose regulations on the shared devices, which are sometimes left abandoned on street corners in towns with fewer restrictions. In Paris earlier this year, residents upset about uncontrolled parking voted to ban scooters, according to a report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
More than one-third of the top 100 cities have banned scooters, mainly in China, according to the report. Other major cities that reject the battery-operated devices include Barcelona, Philadelphia, Sydney, and Toronto, the report found.
Bird was founded by a former Uber Technologies Inc. executive, Travis VanderZanden, in 2017. It let customers remotely unlock the scooters and rent them using an app. The model was widely copied and turned Bird into one of the fastest startups to reach a $1 billion valuation at one point.
As part of its bankruptcy case, the company has filed several routine motions that would allow it to keep operating as it tries to close a sale and come up with a plan to repay creditors.
The case is Bird Global, Inc. 23-20514, US Bankruptcy Court Southern District of Florida (Miami).
(Updates with sale plan and report on worldwide scooter regulation starting in first paragraph.)
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