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The Incentives of SPAC Sponsors


Felix Feng


University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business


Tom Nohel


Loyola University of Chicago


Xuan Tian


Tsinghua University - PBC School of Finance


Wenyu Wang


Indiana University - Kelley School of Business - Department of Finance


Yufeng Wu


University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Department of Finance


 


Abstract


This paper quantitatively studies the incentives of the sponsors of Special PurposeAcquisition Companies (SPACs) and their impact on SPAC investor welfare. We estimate a structural model featuring the strategic interactions between sponsors, targets, and investors using a hand-collected dataset with rich information such as sponsor concessions, earnouts, redemptions, etc. Agency costs appear pervasive: the inter-quintile range of returns reaches 19% for deals sorted on the extent of agency conflict. Tying more of the sponsor’s promote to earnouts and improving information transparency each significantly improve investors’ welfare, while curtailing the issuance of warrants yields only modest improvement.

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