IPO Watch: SPACS Make Good

Some weeks, it seems like there is only one sector in the entire U.S. financial services business that is in demand: initial public offerings of special purpose acquisition companies. These are the blank-check deals in which investors give a management team money in hopes that they will make a good acquisition with it. If within two years they don’t, they need to return the funds, which create fewer expenses incurred between the IPO and the disbanding of the company. Even without an operating business, the SPAC has to pay rent, hire auditors and retain people to investigate potential acquisition opportunities. There’s a real opportunity cost to making a SPAC investment.

On the other hand, a SPAC transaction lets a company go public without the hassle of a road show or scrutiny from IPO buyers, something that many executives find demeaning. For that matter, it lets a company go public, which is no easy matter these days. Good companies will continue to want access to public markets, and restructuring companies will have divisions that they want to sell off. SPACs may make it possible for a handful of companies to get public capital in the next year.

Many SPACs have come public in recent months, but only a few have had deals to announce yet. One of the most recent was the March 13, 2008 announcement of the acquisition of Halcyon Asset Management, a hedge fund manager, by Alternative Asset Management Acquisition Corp. (AMEX:AMV), a SPAC that came public in August 2007. Alternative Asset Management will pay $505 million in cash and notes (more or less its entire net worth) for a 44% stake in Halcyon.

On March 7, Negevtech, an Israeli company that makes test equipment used to inspect semiconductor wafers for defects, announced that it would go public through a merger with . . .

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