Bill Ackman’s SPAC Is Dead. Long Live the SPARC?
The billionaire’s decision to return $4 billion to his investors marks a grim milestone for the blank-check market.
Bill Ackman, chief executive officer of Pershing Square Capital Management LP.
Photographer: Bloomberg/BloombergBill Ackman’s decision to return $4 billion to investors rather than pursue a suboptimal SPAC deal shows admirable restraint. But it’s unlikely to mollify the punters who piled into his Pershing Square Tontine Holdings Ltd. (known to most as PSTH). Not only did he fail to pull off an attractive merger but amateur investors got burned speculating in PSTH securities hoping he would. Ackman’s offering them a consolation prize: it’s just not clear yet how viable and valuable that gift is.
Ackman isn’t the first SPAC sponsor to realize that blank-check firms have reached a dead end, but as PSTH is the largest ever raised it’s still a grim milestone for the asset-class.