Singapore's SPAC Debut Is So Last Season
The city missed the blank-check company rush. The live-streaming startup making its debut won’t start a new craze.
Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News.
Late to the SPAC party.
Photographer: ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFPBack in 2018, a Taiwanese streaming and online-dating service made history on the New York Stock Exchange. For the first time, the shares of a company that rang the listing bell never traded. Five years later, in its new avatar as 17Live Inc., the firm is entering the annals of another market — this time as Singapore’s first-ever combination with a locally traded blank-check stock.
Vertex Technology Acquisition Corp. is taking over 17Live for S$925.1 million ($692 million). The deal is expected to conclude early next month.
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Singapore's SPAC Debut Is So Last Season