The SPAC Fad Is Ending in a Pile of Bankruptcies and Fire Sales
At least eight businesses that went public through mergers with “blank-check” companies have sought protection from creditors.
It took only 10 months for Quanergy Systems Inc., a maker of high-tech sensors and software, to go from its stock market debut to filing for bankruptcy. Fast Radius Inc., a 3D-printing company, made it nine months. Online retail startup Enjoy Technology Inc. lasted eight-and-a-half months before it filed.
What these companies all have in common is the way they made it onto the market. Instead of selling shares in a conventional initial public offering, each of them merged with a special purpose acquisition company. A SPAC is a publicly traded corporate shell with no business other than to seek out a merger with another company, which then inherits the shell’s listing. Such deals were a pandemic-era Wall Street fad—but now a growing number of ventures that went public in this way have gone bankrupt, highlighting how speculative the SPAC game could be.