Following my initial article on SPACs, I was surprised to see how many people and Swiss companies that had been averse to the idea of going public for a long time had, all of a sudden, developed a keen interest in SPACs. I just want to make one thing clear – a merger with a SPAC is not the same thing as a trade sale. It is simply one of the pathways to becoming a public company, where the target management is pretty much left “holding the baby”, once the merger transaction between the SPAC and the target is completed.…

Well, it’s already happening. In the past week, I have heard of 4 Swiss private companies approached by US-listed SPACs interested to acquire them. There may be more such cases in Switzerland by now, but there will definitely be more in the near future. SPACS are publicly traded companies with no commercial operations that have been formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO with the purpose of acquiring a private operating company. The SPAC concept has been around for many years. It is the extent of the phenomenon that is new. Irrespective of whether the SPAC listing trend continues,…