SPAC attack

3 March 2021 By Jennifer Hughes Follow @JennHughes13

The Asian financial centre may ape Wall Street by letting blank-cheque firms list on its bourse. Yet it only recently squished a boom in shifty shell companies. And the issues SPACs claim to avoid aren’t relevant for Hong Kong IPOs. The exchange is better off steering clear.

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Hong Kong’s government is looking into the possibility of allowing special-purpose acquisition vehicles to list on the city’s stock exchange following a boom in SPACs floating in New York.

The city’s Financial Leaders Forum, chaired by the Financial Secretary, has asked the stock exchange and the financial regulator to "to explore suitable listing regimes to enhance the competitiveness of Hong Kong as an international financial centre,“ according to a statement on March 1.

Already this year, $66 billion has been raised by SPACs, according to Dealogic data, equivalent to 79% of all the funds raised this way in 2020.

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