GO Acquisition Corp. (GOAC) to Liquidate Trust

GO Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:GOAC) announced that it will no longer pursue an initial business combination before its transaction deadline of August 7 and will therefore liquidate its trust.

The SPAC will begin the process of redeeming its common stock and returning capital back to its investors as promptly as practicable following, but not more than 10 business days after, its deadline of August 7, 2022. All shareholders are now expected to receive the redemption amount of at least $10.00 per share.

GO, in a lengthy letter to its stockholders, noted that it had two years on its transaction clock and could have sought additional time from investors to complete a business combination. However, the SPAC stated that it did not believe that would be in the best interest of the stockholders. The letter went on to state that over the course of those two years, GO evaluated more than 100 companies and hoped to combine with a travel-related or travel-adjacent target business with a substantial portion of their activities in North America or Europe. The SPAC originally raised $500 million in its August 2020 IPO.

GO also noted successive waves of the pandemic, the exuberance of the SPAC market and its reversal, as well as the recent macroeconomic environment all contributing to a very challenging de-SPAC process and their decision to liquidate.

GO is the eighth SPAC to announce it would liquidate this year, but these numbers do not come as a surprise given the backdrop of market turmoil and current challenges in the SPAC market.

Also worth noting, but not included in its letter, is that GO was also one of the SPACS that was targeted with a lawsuit last August from the professors claiming SPACs were Investment Companies. GO and E.Merge Acquisition Corp’s (Nasdaq: ETAC)  were sued subsequent to Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Tontine Holdings (NYSE: PSTH) by former SEC commissioner Robert Jackson and Yale law professor John Morley.