SPACS: Next Stop Europe

Market Update

The use of special purpose acquisition companies ("SPACs") as fundraising vehicles during 2020 and 2021 has been remarkable. Market sources confirm that the 231 US SPAC issuers that launched initial public offerings ("IPOs") in the first quarter of 2021 surpassed the total number of blank cheque companies listed during the whole of 2020¹.

In Europe, the first half of 2021 has seen interest growing in the use of SPACs as mainstream vehicles for raising capital. Euronext Amsterdam, Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange ("LSE") expect listings to increase in the second half of 2021 but perhaps not at the same frenetic rate seen in the North American and Asian markets throughout 2020. Just over a handful of SPACs had listed on European stock exchanges by the end of the first half of 2021, with the Maples Group having advised approximately half of the issuers involved in those. Notably, at the time of writing, the Maples Group's London law firm