In response to the criticisms, the authors have now updated their earlier paper and published their research results in a Janupost on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance entitled “A Second Look at SPACs: Is This Time Different?” ( here). In their conspicuous November 2020 paper, “A Sober Look at SPACs” ( here), Stanford Law Professor Michael Klausner, NYU Law Professor Michael Ohlrogge, and Stanford Research Associate Emily Ruan warned, among other things, that SPAC shares were highly diluted, that their post-SPAC-merger performance was poor, and that sponsors’ returns were extraordinarily high.Ĭritics at the time suggested that the academics’ research was out of date, and that later SPACs addressed the concerns the authors noted in their data set from an earlier time period. Some readers will recall that in the midst of the SPAC ballyhoo, three academics had sounded a serious note of caution. One of the biggest stories in the financial world for the last 18-24 months has been the astonishing surge in SPAC-related activity.

De spac transaction structure