(Reuters) -Blank-check firm Spinning Eagle Acquisition Corp, backed by former Hollywood executives Harry Sloan and Jeff Sagansky, on Thursday upsized its offering to $2 billion after the Nasdaq eased the process for such companies to spin off new entities.
The exchange operator recently approved a proposal that allows special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) to spin off new investment vehicles without additional paperwork. That would make them similar to a private equity fund and enable blank-check firms to invest in more than one company in separate transactions.
Spinning Eagle in December had filed for a $1.5 billion share sale, proposing a structure to allow it to carve out a portion of raised capital into a new shell company and pursue multiple deals.
However, the SPAC’s backers held back their plan in February following feedback about the proposal from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
If priced successfully, Spinning Eagle’s IPO of 200 million units for $10 each would be the biggest SPAC offer this year, even as blank-check dealmaking has slowed down significantly on tighter regulation and waning investor appetite.
Spinning Eagle said that unused proceeds from the IPO could be used to create a new and independent SPAC called SpinCo.
If Spinning Eagle chooses to do multiple deals, its structure would be similar to billionaire hedge fund investor William Ackman’s Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, which was spun off into an entity called PSTH Remainco after a deal with Universal Music Group earlier this month.
SPACs are shells of cash that are publicly listed for the sole purpose of taking an unknown private target public through a merger, within two years of the listing.
Spinning Eagle’s offering comes more than a month after another SPAC backed by Sloan and Sagansky agreed to take biotech firm Ginkgo public at a $17.5 billion valuation.
Goldman Sachs is the sole underwriter for Spinning Eagle’s IPO.
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