SPAC - Special Purpose Acquisition Company w/ The Wall Street Journal's Amrith Ramkumar

Rob and Rory speak with markets reporter Amrith Ramkumar of The Wall Street Journal to discuss Specials Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). In this episode, we touch on the SPAC craze that has hit the financial markets in 2020 and continued into 2021. Amrith discusses the history of SPACs from a niche product used by a group of wealthy individuals to it now utilized by most of Wall St. and Silicon Valley. He talks about seasoned investors like Bill Foley and Besty Cohen doing SPACs and how this is an alternative to raising money via a VC or Traditional IPO. He provides examples of SPACs such as the SE Asian “Super App” GRAB going public in a SPAC merger that values the business at nearly $40 Billion, even though they aren’t profitable. Lastly, Amirth talks about key investment rounds called (PIPE deals). A Private Investment in Public Equity where investors like Blackrock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, T Rowe Price put in vast amounts of money to get exposure to these companies of the future, which has helped make SPAC’s a mainstream alternative.