The first company launched under Rishi Sunak’s newly relaxed rules to attract special purpose acquisition companies to London after Brexit has said it will shut down, without finding a suitable merger target.
Hambro Perks Acquisition Company said in a statement to the stock market on Monday that it had ceased all operations except for the purposes of winding up the company and returning money to shareholders.
Sir Anthony Salz, the chair of the tech investment company, blamed “challenging circumstances” for stock market listings.
Special purpose acquisition companies (Spacs) are cash shell companies that raise money to list on a stock exchange – often with celebrity sponsors – before finding a target in need of funding and merging with them. They offer an easier route for companies to list on the stock market without going through much of the difficult standard listing process.
Spacs became a phenomenon in the two years after the first coronavirus lockdowns, amid a global investment frenzy. They were mostly associated with US markets, where a deluge of listings raised billions of dollars, including for prominent UK-based companies, such as the now struggling automotive startup Arrival and the car dealer Cazoo.
Many of those listings ended with investors losing large sums of money, leading to a sharp decline in the number of Spacs in the past year.
As Boris Johnson’s chancellor, Sunak ordered an urgent review to help London catch up and attract new stock market listings. A key aim of that review was “liberalising the rules” regarding Spacs. He asked for “bold ideas” to revive the fortunes of the London Stock Exchange, which has seen a dearth of new listings and regular flurries of takeovers by foreign investors.
Announcing the liberalisation, Sunak said: “The UK is one of the best places in the world to start, grow and list a business – and we’re determined to enhance this reputation now we’ve left the EU.”
In the autumn of 2021 Hambro Perks said it had raised £143.5m from the stock market to find an investment target, slightly shy of the £150m it had hoped for. However, Salz said the company would probably be unable to find a suitable target for acquisition before the end of a two-year deadline in November, after talks fell through this year with the drug developer Istesso.
Closing it was a “difficult decision”, he said. “Public equity markets have faced challenging circumstances in the past year, and several new listings have suffered. We have had discussions with some excellent companies, but given the current market conditions, we have concluded that there is little likelihood of achieving a successful business combination within our permitted timeframe.”
Hambro Perks, the investor that was a sponsor of the Spac, has had its own difficulties: its co-founder Dominic Perks, who was involved in finding a target for a merger, resigned last week for undisclosed reasons.
