SPAC Archives - Americans for Financial Reform

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Letters to Regulators: Follow Up Comment to the SEC on Private Funds

AFREF sent a Follow Up Comment to the Securities and Exchange Commission expressing support for its proposals that would require private fund advisers to provide their investors with greater and more detailed information around the fees, expenses, returns, and bilateral investment relations (via side letters). We echo many of the comments the SEC has since received since its initial comment period and reflect how current market conditions make the Commission’s proposals especially a priority given the variation in the reporting and valuation of private market assets.

Letters to Regulators: Comment to the SEC on SPACs

AFREF sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission expressing its support for its many proposals that would amend the definition of a “blank check company” to include the current and any future iterations of Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). Such proposals would impose greater liability on many involved in the creation and distribution of SPACs and provide investors with greater transparency into the forward looking projections that the issuers of SPACs have been misleadingly overly optimistic with.

Blog: SEC’s proposal on SPACs would better protect investors as financiers profit regardless

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposals on Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) provide retail investors with much greater investor protections, which is welcome news to AFR, as we have been urging such changes for more than a year.

Blog Post: SPAC fantasies unravel for electric truck company Lordstown Motors

Lordstown Motors was supposed to be a promising electric vehicle startup backed by General Motors that would help revolutionize low-emissions vehicles while also revitalizing America’s “Rust Belt”. Instead, many of its promises, exploiting the loopholes in the SPAC model, were soon found to be untrue, reiterating the important changes that need to be made to the business model of companies taken public through SPACs.

Congressional Testimony: Testimony of Andrew Park on SPACs Before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship and Capital Markets

On May 24, 2021 at 12:00PM Eastern AFR’s Senior Policy Analyst Andrew Park testified before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets on Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs). Download the full written testimony here. Written Testimony before the House Financial

Policy Memo: SPAC-tacular for Wall Street, For the Rest of Us, Less So

The folk legend Robin Hood was, as every child knows, the legendary outlaw who robbed from the rich to give to the poor. But in a reincarnation of a long-running Wall Street scheme, it is the wily financiers who rob from the ordinary folk holding investment accounts at Robinhood.