Celebrity SPACs Leave Famous Winners Looking More Like Losers
- Blank checks tied to entertainers, sports heroes lag market
- Trump SPAC soars but rest mostly trail S&P and 21 show losses
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Betting on flashy names like Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Shaquille O’Neal and Martha Stewart to boost blank-check companies this year left investors mostly in the red.
Just about the nicest thing you could say about celebrity-backed special-purchase acquisition companies and the firms they brought public is that they’ve lost less for investors than benchmarks for the whole SPAC category. After that, things get ugly: 21 out of 33 SPACs tied to famous public figures have posted negative returns for 2021.