It’s Been a Tough Week for SPACs. Plus, Barington/Hilco to Liquidate.

When the going gets tough….

In the least shocking news of the week, Barington/Hilco announced this morning of their intention to liquidate.  The redemption price per share is $10.87854059 (they really carried that out far) and its public shares ceased trading as of this morning, November 1, 2018.  As of the close of business on November 1, the public shares will be deemed cancelled and will represent only the right to receive the Redemption Amount.

It’s been a tough week for SPACs.  We’ve had two announced adjournments due to “market conditions” (FSAC, MPAC) and two announced liquidations (BHAC, AHPA).  Plus, we have yet to see any results from GTY Technology Holdings (GTYH) since they held their vote to extend on Tuesday (a bad sign?).

Furthermore, we have two more SPACs running up on their completion deadlines without having yet announced a deal – Modern Media Acquisition Corp. (MMDM) is due to expire on November 9th and Big Rock Partners Acquisition Corp. (BRPA) hits the wall on November 20th.

The most shocking of all of the SPACs above is obviously Avista Healthcare.  It’s still a bit of a head scratcher as to how they forgot they needed 100% approval of the extension (or why that was in their articles to begin with), but nonetheless…it counts as another failed deal.

Hence, the SPAC market is starting to feel a bit ominous coming off the high of an active and exciting summer of high profile deals.  Ironically, four out of the five above deals (FSAC, MPAC, AHPA, GTYH) were all large, high profile IPOs that had high expectations.  This was not a case of “these should have never IPO’d in the first place”.  So, if the A-teams are struggling, is this a sign of more trouble to come?

Let’s hope not.  On deck tomorrow we have the Easterly Acquisition Corp. (EACQ) vote, plus the MPAC vote. This will be followed by Kayne Anderson’s vote (KAAC) on Tuesday, November 6th.  Let’s see how these three shake out.