The Incentives of SPAC Sponsors
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.