Special-purpose acquisition company, known as a SPAC were seen as sidestepping the rigour and regulation of a traditional public offering, with features unfavourable to small investors
A SPAC, for the uninitiated, is a shell company set up by financial backers known as sponsors. They raise money by going public in an initial public offering, or IPO, with the promise of merging with a real company. Photo credit - Shutterstock
Back in 2015, one of my dishiest banking sources called, incredulous, with a tip about Aubrey McClendon. The disgraced energy executive, who was being sued by his own company, had found a way to raise money for a new venture: a special-purpose acquisition company, known as a SPAC.
Rarely, if ever, had this source and I talked before about SPACs, also known as blank-check firms. At the time, most of Wall Street considered these financial vehicles tainted, a last resort for desperate dealmakers who couldn’t find other ways to raise funds.
SPACs were seen as sidestepping the rigor and regulation of a traditional public offering, with features unfavorable to small investors. That gave SPACs a dodgy reputation, which explains my source’s incredulity at the McClendon venture.
We’ve come a long way since then. In the past year or so, SPACs seemed to lose their taint. More than 600 SPACs have gone public since July 2020, when the SPAC public-offering market heated up dramatically, raising about $200 billion, according to market tracker SPACInsider.
That’s partly because prominent financial players like hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, investment banker Michael Klein and former Credit Suisse chief executive Tidjane Thiam have refashioned themselves into SPAC entrepreneurs. SPACs have become so fashionable, in fact, that they’ve been popularized beyond Wall Street by celebrities like pop star Jennifer Lopez and basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.
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