San Diego Soccer Club Wants to Go Public

Following in the footsteps of mighty European soccer clubs such as World Club Champions Manchester United, a lowly team from San Diego said that it plans to go public--the first professional U.S. soccer club to make such a move. The San Diego Flash, which plays in the American “A” League--the equivalent of second-division soccer, with Major League Soccer being the first division--said it filed plans with the Securities and Exchange Commission to merge with a publicly traded shell company, then start trading its stock by the middle of next week. Yan Skwara, president of San Diego Soccer Development Corp., which owns the fledgling Flash club, said that the corporation had filed to merge with Roller Coaster Inc., which trades on the Nasdaq over-the-counter Bulletin Board. Under the filing, Roller Coaster would change its name to San Diego Soccer Development Corp., and the renamed company would begin trading under the symbol SCCR. Roller Coaster traded recently at $2.25. Although the offering is not technically an initial public offering, Skwara said, the IPO acronym is still correct. “Except that I take it to mean an ‘informal public offering,’ ” said Skwara, an investment banker who played professional soccer in Europe.