January 31, 2024
At the height of the SPAC boom, liberated startups capitalized on the ability to tout lofty goals about the years ahead without much of a risk of legal fallout. Now, the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s new rules tightening SPACs’ …
January 24, 2024
Wall Street’s main regulator on Wednesday is set to demand more investor protections for deals involving special purpose acquisition companies, tightening rules on a once-popular pathway for taking firms public. After surging during the Covid-19 pandemic as an alternative to …
December 27, 2023
Wall Street’s affair with blank-check firms, the finance fad that pushed companies onto the stock market during the COVID-19 pandemic, ended this year with a string of big bankruptcies and even bigger losses for shareholders. At least 21 firms that …
October 31, 2023
Financials Acquisition Corp. said Monday it would ask shareholders to back its planned merger with its newly formed insurance venture, in a test of investor appetite for new stocks. The special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) unveiled plans earlier this year …
June 2, 2023
The unwinding of the blank-check stock frenzy, one of the hottest pandemic-era trends on Wall Street, is playing out its last act on a different stage: the courtroom. The raucous boom in special-purpose acquisition companies — which bankrolled takeovers that …
May 1, 2023
A former chief financial officer of multiple special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) was sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling more than $5 million from them, and losing almost all of it trading meme stocks and cryptocurrencies. Cooper Morgenthau, …
December 15, 2022
The great SPAC crash is closing out the year in dramatic fashion as more shareholders prepare to cash out of the speculative-investing industry for good. At least 80 special-purpose acquisition companies, which have raised $24 billion in total, face a …
June 15, 2022
U.S. financial industry groups are pushing to water down a draft Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule aimed at reining-in special purpose acquisition companies or SPACs, arguing it could kill the industry. The American Securities Association (ASA), the SPAC Association …
May 10, 2022
Just a few years after banks helped create a gargantuan market for blank-check companies, they’re pulling away from the deals, afraid of the risks. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is ending its involvement with most of the special purpose acquisition companies …
April 12, 2022
OneDegree, a Hong Kong-based insurer of digital assets, has been approached by investment banks about going public through a blank-check company, its co-founder said. The firm, one of four with a so-called virtual insurer license in Hong Kong, expects to …