In a rare commentary from an individual member of the SEC, Commissioner Hester Peirce posted a statement to the regulator’s website, in which she mulls the termination last week of a deal between Alberton Acquisition and SolarMax Technology.
Alberton on April 14 said SolarMax intends to terminate its merger because it reasonably believed that the deal would not be completed by April 26.
Commissioner Peirce observes that the SPAC’s announcement mentions that its registration statement had not been decared effective by the SEC.
She writes: “Therein lies the question that troubles me: Why exactly did the SEC not take the routine step—one typically taken on delegated authority by the staff without input from the Commission—to declare the registration statement effective?”
Commission inaction on a request for acceleration of the effective date of a registration statement is highly unusual, she notes.
“The failure to take an otherwise routine step makes sense only in the larger context of the Commission’s newfound hostility to SPAC capital formation,” Peirce writes. Read more.
