Three little fishies – a new cartoon that illustrates how the SPAC mania is starting to wilt. A special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) is a “blank check” shell corporation designed to take companies public without going through the traditional initial public offering process.
In the last three years, there was a 6x increase in the number of companies using special purpose vehicles to go public, reaching 395 and raising $95Bn in 2021 alone.
However, since June 2021 the market has started to cool due to a regulatory crackdown on SPAC accounting rules, a flurry of lawsuits, and the poor post-public performance of most of the companies – the CNBC’s Index of SPAC companies that have gone public saw a 25% drop in the year to date.
In related news, Ian Osborne, the ‘King of Spacs,’ who helped secure financing for much of the SPAC boom in the US announced that he had secured a rent record for a European expansion with office space in London’s Soho district.
Cartoon provided by Ian Foley of iantoons.com
