Wall Street blank cheque craze may be about to crash
Hedge funds say special purpose acquisition companies, or Spacs, are ripe for major falls
8 March 2021 • 6:00am
Bets against Wall Street blank cheque companies have rocketed to $3bn (£2.2bn) as sceptical hedge funds predict that the celebrity-driven craze will end in a crash.
Firms short-selling the shares of so-called special purpose acquisition companies, or Spacs, have already made $360m in profits this year alone, according to market data – and experts said they are now positioned for major falls if the bubble bursts. The firm buying British electric vehicle firm Arrival is among raiders’ top targets.
The Alussa-
Freyr deal is not a particularly terrible arrangement as far as SPACs go. However, it’s worth highlighting because it shows the difference between a hot SPAC and one that’s getting ignored by the market. Without any investor attention, Freyr could end up being a bust.
With the Freyr merger, Alussa intends to dominate the market for clean battery production. This should work, right? After all,
Quantumscape (NYSE:
QS) has been one of the biggest SPAC winners in the space. So, why is QS stock worth over $50 and ALUS stock just shy of $11?
Reading through the investor presentation, a few things stand out. First, the company is based in Norway the American market tends to prefer companies based in the Silicon Valley or other engineering hotspots like Boston. Second, it’s unclear how much proprietary technology Freyr has itself.