Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: SPAC Math No Longer Adds Up

SPAC SPAC SPAC

Simplifying a bit, the way a special purpose acquisition company works is that the sponsor of the SPAC raises a pot of money by selling shares to public investors at $10 per share. Say the sponsor offers 20 million shares, so the pot of money has $200 million in it. Then she goes out and looks for a private target company to merge with to take it public. Say she finds a private company that is worth $800 million. (The valuation of a private company will always be uncertain, but let’s assume for now that the valuation ...