NEW YORK (AP) — After a shaky four years on Wall Street, Soho House is ready to go private again.
The luxury members club operator has struck a deal with an investor group led by hotel giant MCR, which will buy its outstanding shares for $9 each in cash. Soho House's Executive Chairman Ron Burkle and other big shareholders will roll over their stakes and retain control of the business, per a Monday announcement from the company.
The take-private offer implies a total enterprise value of roughly $2.7 billion for Soho House, including debt. The company says it expects to complete the deal by the end of 2025, pending the regulatory greenlight and other closing conditions. If approved, the transaction means Soho House will stop trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Shares of Soho House climbed more than 15% by mid-morning Monday, following news of Soho House signing the agreement.
Among other big names to join Soho House's future leadership is actor and now tech investor Ashton Kutcher, who is set to join the company's board following the deal's completion. Tyler Morse, CEO of New York-based MCR, will also join the board as Vice Chairman.
In a statement, Morse said that MCR had “long admired” Soho House and that its investment in the company “represents a strategic opportunity to combine our operational expertise with one of the most distinctive brands in hospitality.”
Soho House CEO Andrew Carnie pointed to the club's growth over the years, and said that returning to private ownership will help the company “build on this momentum."
Soho House's roots date back to 1995, starting with a single club in London opened by founder Nick Jones. But today, the company's footprint includes 46 Soho House locations worldwide, in addition to a handful of coworking spaces, beach clubs and digital platforms.
Soho House describes itself as a “global membership platform of physical and digital spaces.” It bills its flagship clubs — which include spas, gyms and other luxury amenities — as a “home for creative people to come together and belong.” Known for attracting celebrities and other figures with deep pockets, membership fees often rack up to at least several thousand dollars a year.
Soho House had more than 270,000 total members as of the end of June. And the company has reported an uptick in revenue during recent quarters. In earnings announced earlier this month, Soho House said had a total of it raked in $329.8 million in total revenues for its second fiscal quarter, an 8.9% jump year-over-year.
Despite recent growth, the company's stock has tumbled during its time on the public market. Since Soho House began trading in 2021, its stock has fallen roughly 30%, trading at under $9 a share on Monday. That's down from $14 a share that the company debuted in its July 2021 initial public offering.
FILE - Ashton Kutcher walks on the field before an NFL football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Chicago Bears, Dec. 8, 2024, in Santa Clara, Calif. (AP Photo/Scot Tucker, file)
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Myanmar insisted Friday that its deadly military campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority was a legitimate counter-terrorism operation and did not amount to genocide, as it defended itself at the top United Nations court against an allegation of breaching the genocide convention.
Myanmar launched the campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.
“Myanmar was not obliged to remain idle and allow terrorists to have free reign of northern Rakhine state,” the country’s representative Ko Ko Hlaing told black-robed judges at the International Court of Justice.
African nation Gambia brought a case at the court in 2019 alleging that Myanmar's military actions amount to a breach of the Genocide Convention that was drawn up in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust.
Some 1.2 million members of the Rohingya minority are still languishing in chaotic, overcrowded camps in Bangladesh, where armed groups recruit children and girls as young as 12 are forced into prostitution. The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed last year by U.S. President Donald Trump shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and have caused children to starve to death.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar has long considered the Rohingya Muslim minority to be “Bengalis” from Bangladesh even though their families have lived in the country for generations. Nearly all have been denied citizenship since 1982.
As hearings opened Monday, Gambian Justice Minister Dawda Jallow said his nation filed the case after the Rohingya “endured decades of appalling persecution, and years of dehumanizing propaganda. This culminated in the savage, genocidal ‘clearance operations’ of 2016 and 2017, which were followed by continued genocidal policies meant to erase their existence in Myanmar.”
Hlaing disputed the evidence Gambia cited in its case, including the findings of an international fact-finding mission set up by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council.
“Myanmar’s position is that the Gambia has failed to meet its burden of proof," he said. "This case will be decided on the basis of proven facts, not unsubstantiated allegations. Emotional anguish and blurry factual pictures are not a substitute for rigorous presentation of facts.”
Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi represented her country at jurisdiction hearings in the case in 2019, denying that Myanmar armed forces committed genocide and instead casting the mass exodus of Rohingya people from the country she led as an unfortunate result of a battle with insurgents.
The pro-democracy icon is now in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges after a military takeover of power.
Myanmar contested the court’s jurisdiction, saying Gambia was not directly involved in the conflict and therefore could not initiate a case. Both countries are signatories to the genocide convention, and in 2022, judges rejected the argument, allowing the case to move forward.
Gambia rejects Myanmar's claims that it was combating terrorism, with Jallow telling judges on Monday that “genocidal intent is the only reasonable inference that can be drawn from Myanmar’s pattern of conduct.”
In late 2024, prosecutors at another Hague-based tribunal, the International Criminal Court, requested an arrest warrant for the head of Myanmar’s military regime for crimes committed against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power from Suu Kyi in 2021, is accused of crimes against humanity for the persecution of the Rohingya. The request is still pending.
FILE - In this Sept. 7, 2017, file photo, smoke rises from a burned house in Gawdu Zara village, northern Rakhine state, where the vast majority of the country's 1.1 million Rohingya lived, Myanmar. (AP Photo, File)
