SPACs raised billions. As mergers dry up, we follow the money

has a special reverence for large numbers. They can frighten as debt or reassure as backstops. The $260bn raised by special-purpose acquisition companies (s) since the start of 2020 lacks the multitrillion-dollar aura of federal debt or America’s pandemic stimulus. It is nevertheless big enough to have become a defining symbol of recent market mania. s used to be a curious capital-markets sideshow: complex, obscure, hardly novel. A conventional initial public offering underwritten by investment banks was the marker of corporate maturity; merging with a pile of cash and entering the stockmarket by the backdoor was not. This changed when stockmarkets rallied from their covid-induced lows: more than 800 s raised capital between May 2020 and December 2021. Underwriting fees were collected; questionable incentives and complexity remained.