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Odd Lots

Why Blank Check Companies Are The Hottest Thing This Year

Odd Lots

Bloomberg

Business News, News, News Commentary, Business, Investing

4.52K Ratings

🗓️ 10 September 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

SPACs have been around a long time. The basic premise is that a group of people raise a bunch of money from public market investors, with the premise of then going out to buy a specific, individual company. They're seen as an alternative to IPOs. While historically they've had a reputation for some questionable deals, this year they've been booming. All kinds of big names like Bill Ackman and Paul Ryan (yes, that one) are getting in on the action. On this episode, we speak with Kelly Driscoll, one of the founders of the SPAC Fusion Acquisition Corp, who explains why these entities are so hot right now.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

On December 4th and 5th, against the backdrop of the United Nations Climate Change Conference,

0:05.2

Bloomberg Green will convene the foremost leaders in business, finance, policy, academia,

0:10.3

and NGOs for candid conversations focused on creating solutions to support

0:14.9

the goals set forth at COP28. Join our community of global influencers and

0:19.5

problem solvers in Dubai to build connections, inspire innovation and challenge the status quo in the

0:25.1

battle against climate change. Register at Bloomberg Live.com slash B Green Radio. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast I'm Joe Wiesenthal.

0:45.0

I'm Tracy Allaway.

0:46.0

And I'm Joe Wiesenthal.

0:48.0

Joe, you've heard of Spacks, right?

0:51.0

Yeah, I absolutely have heard of them.

0:54.0

You know, I've heard about them for a while, so-called blank check companies, but they've definitely

0:59.1

been one of the big stories of 2020, especially in the last couple of months.

1:04.0

Right and for those that don't know SPAC stands for a special purpose acquisition company

1:09.2

and they're basically these blank check firms shell companies that set out to buy other companies and make money off of them and it's a way for people to get involved with those companies

1:23.8

without the companies actually having to IPO in the public market.

1:28.0

Right and the interesting thing is that the SPAC is public right away. So the SPAC does the IPO.

1:36.9

It trades. And so of course there's always a lot of, you know, there's venture capital and

1:41.0

there's private equity. there's always companies that are

1:43.9

financial companies that are buying other companies but this is a situation in

1:48.4

which the buyer the shell goes public it raises money in that offering, and then it goes out in search of an actual real business to buy.

1:59.0

Right, so you're sort of pre-funding acquisitions and you don't know what they are going to be exactly.

2:05.2

Now the funny thing about SPACs is like I don't remember that much about them

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