Welcome to our exchanges at Goldman Sachs Markets Update for Friday August 7th.

Each week we check him with a leader across the firm to get his or her quick take

on what they're watching in markets.

I'm Jake Stewart Global Head of Corporate Communications here at the firm and

today's guest is Olympia McNerney, a member of the Equity Capital Markets

and Alternative Capital Markets Group in New York.

Today we'll be talking about a subject that's been much in the news, SPACs, and the

flurry of interest we've seen recently in that vehicle.

Olympia, welcome to the program.

Thanks for having me.

So let's start with the basic definitional issue.

What is a SPAC and why are they all of a sudden on the rise?

Yeah, of course.

I think this is a term that has changed in perception a lot over the years.

To level set, a SPAC stands for a special purpose acquisition corp.

And what that means is that effectively we raise capital for this fact,

and it's a pool of capital that can be used to purchase a stake in a company

and bring it public through a merger. I say it's changed a lot over the years.

It used to be something that was viewed as a method of last

reserve for companies.

And fast forward to today, facts and I'll get into more detail

have been increasingly popular in terms of an alternate way to bring companies into the public markets.

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