Ahead of We Company IPO, investors willing to sell shares at discount from higher valuations

In the lead up to We Company’s IPO, some institutional investors were willing to trade their stock in the company at deep discounts to the $47 billion valuation set by Masayoshi Son and announced earlier his year.

Son’s Japanese conglomerate SoftBank announced a large investment in the We Company in January that included $1 billion to buy out current investors. But that money was intended to buy investors out at a valuation of $20 billion – not the $47 billion the company was valued at following SoftBank’s most recent funding round, according to the Financial Times.