April 5, 2021 | by Drew Bernstein, Co-Managing Partner, MarcumBP
On March 31st, the SEC’s Acting Chief Accountant, Paul Munter, issued a lengthy “public statement” detailing concerns about private companies' readiness that go public through a SPAC merger to be successful as listed companies. His admonitions come as SPAC IPOs have exploded in the first quarter of 2021, with 298 SPACs raising over $87 billion, nearly 24 times the $3.49 billion raised by 13 SPACs during the comparable period in 2020. At the same time, SPAC IPOs that had been trading at huge premia to the cash held in trust and outperforming the S&P back in February have seen a significant retrenchment, with an average return of just 1.5% for SPACs that debuted in Q1 2021, according to Renaissance Capital.
March 31, 2021 | by Drew Bernstein, Co-Managing Partner, MarcumBP
In 2020, China dominated the global IPO market as never before. 565 new public companies were born through listings on China’s domestic markets, Hong Kong, and the U.S. exchanges, raking in $133 billion dollars. That is up by 51% from 2019 and compares to $78.2 billion raised by 218 operating companies on the U.S. markets during the same period. While the U.S. still led the world in capital raising last year, that was primarily due to the unprecedented 248 SPAC IPOs that raised $75.5 billion dollars. In 2021, SPAC IPOs based in Asia are taking off as experienced private equity, venture, and hedge fund investors launch their own SPAC initiatives. A SPAC merger creates yet another option for the management teams of companies from Greater China to consider in order to raise capital and obtain public status on an accelerated timeframe.
March 19, 2021 | by Drew Bernstein, Co-Managing Partner, MarcumBP
In the past 18 months, many of the biggest names in finance have embraced SPACs, as they became an obsession of both retail investors and the financial media. So far in 2021, 264 SPAC IPOs have gone public, raising $77 billion — a pace of over $1.5 billion per trading day. This compares to 71 operating companies that have IPOed thus far this year, raising $30.1 billion.
February 1, 2021 | by Drew Bernstein, Co-Managing Partner, MarcumBP
The U.S. IPO market is off to a rollicking start in 2021, with 114 new listings in the month of January that have raised $36.1 billion. The top performer so far? RLX Technology, the Chinese e-cigarette purveyor that rocketed 146% on the first day's trading, is currently hovering at twice its offering price.
January 19, 2021 | by Drew Bernstein, Co-Managing Partner, MarcumBP
The White House put over a dozen Chinese companies on an investment blacklist. Congress passed legislation to enforce long-neglected requirements for audit inspections or delist the offending companies from U.S. exchanges. China’s government announced antitrust investigations that shook the value of internet goliaths, Alibaba and Tencent.
October 19, 2020 | by Drew Bernstein
While special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have existed since the early 1990s, these investment vehicles have gained popularity in recent years. SPAC IPOs have raised over $49 billion thus far in 2020, outstripping all prior records, and many more have filed to go public by the end of the year. While in the past, most SPACs were taken public by boutique investment bankers and raised tens of millions of dollars, today, nearly every "bulge bracket" firm has led a SPACs deal, with proceeds up to hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.
October 8, 2020 | by Drew Bernstein
Despite a directive from a White House working group that could lead the SEC to close the door to companies whose auditors are not PCAOB-inspected, Chinese companies continued to raise significant amounts of capital on U.S. exchanges in the third quarter of 2020.
July 6, 2020 | by Drew Bernstein
Reading the headlines, one would think that this would be the worst of all possible moments for a Chinese company to contemplate a U.S. IPO. Tensions over issues ranging from trade to managing the COVID-19 pandemic are at a boiling point. The Senate recently passed legislation requiring the SEC to delist Chinese companies whose auditors do not comply with U.S. regulators' inspections. Some commentators have predicted a looming “divorce” between the world’s two largest economies.
May 21, 2020 | by Drew Bernstein
On May 18th, NASDAQ proposed new rules for IPOs from “Restrictive Markets” that would raise the bar for smaller Chinese companies seeking to complete an initial public offering on the U.S. markets. The new rules formalize the enhanced scrutiny that smaller Chinese companies have received over the past year.
