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SPAC? "Many small investors will lose money"

2021-02-26T07:13:18.124Z


It's like an open house in a casino: all over the world, investors are putting billions in empty company shells - in the vague hope that others will turn it into big business. What's up with this dangerous new stock market hype?


The list is getting more and more motley: Ex-basketball star

Shaquille O'Neal

(48), American football star

Colin Kapernick

(33),

Bernard Arnault

(71), head of LVMH, the largest luxury corporation in the world, and one of the richest People of Europe, and soon also

Martin Blessing

(57), once head of Commerzbank: They are all founding a SPAC - an empty wallet for which they can raise billions of dollars and euros from investors.

In the USA alone, around 250 of these vehicles were founded last year, and around 83 billion dollars flowed into them.

In January of this year, the pace picked up again: On average, the Economist has calculated, five SPACs were founded per working day, they were filled with more than 26 billion dollars - although they are empty, i.e. not yet operating a company.

This week the topic finally arrived in Germany: The well-known and successful investor and financial engineer Klaus Hommels, who made part of his fortune through a very early investment in Spotify, started his SPAC in Frankfurt.

Investors gave him 275 million euros.

more on the subject

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Just like that - in the hope that Hommels will find an interesting company with her money that wants to go public.

What is the concept behind these SPACs?

Does that help private investors invest in promising tech companies early on?

Or are they just being milked?

And what does that mean for the financing of entrepreneurship as a whole - do the SPACs set false incentives or are they an opportunity for founders?

This is what mm editor Jonas Rest discusses with mm editors-in-chief Martin Noé and Sven Clausen in this podcast.

For Rest, who has been observing the SPAC scene for months, the matter is clear: "Many small investors will lose money."

soc

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-02-26

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