, Columnist
Thanks, Wall Street, But We Have Enough SPACs Now
The blank-check market is oversaturated and recent deals have performed abysmally. Time for a breather and a rethink.
Spacing out on SPACs.
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Wall Street has an unfortunate habit of pushing financial innovations to such extremes that they break. This is essentially the problem facing special purpose acquisition companies: They’ve oversaturated the market and are now dysfunctional.
Blank-check firms raised more than $160 billion on U.S. exchanges in 2021, about double what they raised the prior year, according to Bloomberg data. Almost 600 SPACs are now searching for an acquisition, with another 250 or so indicating they plan to list shares. That’s more than enough for a fragile equities market to digest.