“And it’s too late, Baby, now it’s too late.” As Carole King sings in her iconic 1971 hit, sometimes you take too long to fix a situation and the damage is done. “Something inside has died, and I can’t hide and I just can’t fake it.”
Last week the US Securities and Exchange Commission issued final rules for special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs). A Spac is a blank-cheque vehicle that offers private companies an alternative route to a stock exchange listing. Once the Spac raises money, its sponsors have usually two years to combine it with an operating company.
The new SEC rules are long and detailed, but the basic gist is to align the procedures for initial public offerings (IPOs) with mergers of companies with listed Spacs (aka “de-Spacs”). The key features are: