Over the past two years, it has felt like almost everyone — from Jay-Z to Shaq O’Neal to Bill Ackman — had listed a cash shell on the stock market, the Financial Times writes in an op/ed.
The problem is, the boom has rapidly turned to a bust. Over the past six months, according to Goldman Sachs, the average post-acquisition company has declined 43 percent with some seeing almost all their value wiped out, like British electric vehicle company Arrival, which is down nearly 90 percent from its all-time highs.
You might instinctively think, then, that now SPAC-mania has turned to a SPAC-splat, we’d soon be hearing the end of it.
Yet there’s a slight wrinkle here: despite the dreadful market sentiment, there’s still an awful lot of cash sitting in SPACs looking for a target. How much, you ask? Well, as of February 3, $144 billion to be exact. Read more.
