On October 3, 2018, Bill Haddad was quoted in Bloomberg Law in an article about how the number of new "blank check" companies using a U.S. exchange to fund mergers this year will likely break a 10-year record.
According to the article, IPOs of "special purpose acquisition companies" (SPACs), which are shell companies with no operations that are traded on a public exchange with the intent of using the money raised on the exchange to acquire another company, priced during the first quarters of 2018 tied the offerings priced in all of 2017. This signals that investors have more confidence in corporate dealmakers to find and close transactions.
Mr. Haddad said, "It's a very hot sector." These listings "are really going well."
Haddad added, that's partly because market liquidity, or the ability to buy and sell shares without big price changes, has held strong and allowed investors to easily move money into SPACs. It's also a product of more SPAC-involved deals getting done in their allotted time periods.