Dec 1, 2021
Match settles legal fight with Tinder founders for $441m
Tinder's founders first sued Match and its former owner IAC in August 2018, claiming they had undervalued the app to avoid paying billions of dollars. The plaintiffs, consisting of 10 current and former top staff including Sean Rad, Justin Mateen and Jonathan Badeen, were given stock options in Tinder as part of their compensation in 2014.But because Tinder is a private company, they were not allowed to cash in their stock options and sell shares on the open market. Their total stake, equivalent to a fifth of Tinder, could only be sold to Match and IAC on specific dates, when the stock options would be independently valued. The lawsuit claims that when Tinder was sold to Match and IAC, the firms merged Tinder into Match without the consent of Tinder's board of directors and cancelled future dates for when options could be exercised. The lawyers for Match and IAC argued that Mr Rad was suffering from "Seller's remorse" and had not taken the opportunity to argue that Tinder was worth more than $3bn when it was being valued in 2017.Match Group's filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday declared that the firm intends to pay the settlement using cash on hand.
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