Tilman Fertitta, the billionaire owner of Fertitta Entertainment, the parent company of Golden Nugget casinos, Landry's restaurants and the Houston Rockets.Experts have long doubted the sustainability of the pandemic-era SPAC boom, during which hundreds of companies have used blank-check vehicles to raise tens of billions of dollars at their IPOs. The frenzy has cooled over the past year, as many companies saw their shares plummet after going public.
The rush of cancelations at the end of 2021 includes the planned merger of Fertitta Entertainment–the parent company of Golden Nugget casinos, Landry’s restaurant and other assets owned by billionaire Tilman Fertitta–with the blank-check firm Fast Acquisition Corp. Also called off in recent weeks were impending fusions involving BBQGuys, the online grill retailer backed by NFL giants Eli and Payton Manning; fintech back office company Apex Fintech; and cloud software platform ServiceMax.
In total, some 17 SPAC mergers, valued at a collective $37.2 billion, have been terminated during the final six months of 2021, compared to four worth $720 million during the six months prior, according to data provided toby financial data firm Dealogic. Just seven SPAC deals were terminated in 2020. A slew of others have been delayed into next year, a sign that they may fall through as well, says Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in IPOs.
SPACs became wildly popular early in the Covid-19 pandemic as a relatively speedy and streamlined alternative to traditional IPOs. The number of private companies choosing this option increased nearly ten-fold between 2019 and 2021, when there were more than 600 SPAC IPOs, according to a