The use of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to access public capital has become a popular tool in most industries. For the space sector, it all started with Virgin Galactic in October of 2019 and in the last 15 months another $156 billion of capital was raised through SPACs across all industries. Space is a capital-intensive business and will see even more SPAC activity this year with Astra , BlackSky , Spire Global , Momentus , New Vista Acquisition Corp and most recently RocketLab joining in. There is a rich history of public market debut methods and now, with a new spin on an old method, the SPAC seems to be firmly added to the mix — but is it a legitimate capital tool or just another way to skirt regulators? Going public by offering to sell shares to retail investors has always been considered the ultimate in a company's journey. The initial public offering (IPO) was originally done through a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) process called … [Read more...] about Are space SPAC IPOs a regulator’s dilemma?
