SPACs

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In reporting in prior posts on SPAC-related litigation, I have primarily focused on federal court securities class action litigation (for example, here). In addition to the federal court litigation, there has also recently been state-court SPAC-related litigation filed, as I have also briefly noted (here, for example). In early April 2021, the Akin Gump law firm published a client alert memo noting that, at the time, over thirty SPACs has been sued in merger objection lawsuits filed in New York state court. In a May 5, 2021 post on her On the Case blog (here), Alison Frankel updated the Akin Gump filing data and reported that there have now been over 60 New York state court SPAC-related lawsuits filed. As Frankel’s article notes, the litigation itself is only part of the picture, as the plaintiffs’ lawyers involved have also been active in presenting SPACs with pre-lawsuit demand letters as well.
Continue Reading SPAC-Related State Court Merger Objection Litigation

Is the SEC staff about to issue guidelines specifying that the safe harbor for forward looking statements does not apply to SPAC merger transactions? An April 28, 2020 exclusive report on Reuters (here) says that the SEC is considering taking the step. If the agency were to issue guidance restricting the availability of the safe harbor for SPACs, it could significantly restrict SPAC’s use of target company projections in advance of de-SPAC mergers, and even further slow the already cooling SPAC market. The SEC’s possible action is discussed further in an April 29, 2021 post on the Cooley law firms PubCo blog, here.
Continue Reading Are SEC Guidelines on SPAC Projections Ahead?

Regular readers of this blog know that I have been following the developing SPAC-related litigation closely. Readers also know that the cast of defendants in these cases can be extensive, diverse, and in some cases overlapping. For example, the defendants may include former directors and officers of the SPAC; former directors and officers of the acquired company; and current directors and officers of the company formed by the merger. Some of the individuals named may be sued in more than one capacity. These features of the suits will complicate the litigation. These features will also complicate the application of insurance to the defense and settlement of this litigation, as well.

In an April 27, 2021 post on the Freshfields law firm blog entitled “Tower vs. Tower: Implications of SPAC Shareholder Litigation for the D&O Insurance World” (here), Freshfields partner Boris Feldman takes a look at these complications and “what a wave of SPAC shareholder suits may mean for the Directors and Officers Liability Insurance Industry.”
Continue Reading Will SPAC-Related Securities Suits Lead to “Tower vs. Tower” D&O Insurance Coverage Battles?

In what is a notable development in the emerging SPAC-related securities class action litigation scene, the parties to a SPAC-related securities suit involving the streaming media company Akazoo company have reached a partial settlement in the aggregate amount of $35 million. The deal is a partial settlement because claims remain pending against other defendants. As discussed below, the settlement has a number of interesting features. It is, in any event, a noteworthy data point for the discussion about SPAC-related litigation exposures.
Continue Reading Akazoo SPAC-Related Litigation Partially Settled for $35 Million

Readers of this blog know that there have been several SPAC-related securities class action lawsuits filed in 2021, with the suits mostly coming in after the de-SPAC transaction has been completed. Even readers who think they get the idea already will want to be sure to take a look at the new SPAC-related lawsuit that came in earlier this week. What makes this one different is that, though the lawsuit names both the SPAC and the SPAC merger target company as defendants, the merger, though announced, has not yet even taken place. And, mind you, this is not your garden variety merger objection lawsuit, it is a full blown 10b-5 class action lawsuit. Interested? Read on.
Continue Reading SPAC and Target Company Hit with Pre-Merger 10b-5 Class Action Suit

As I have noted in recent blog posts, there have already been several securities class action lawsuits filed this year related to the current wave of SPAC activity. These recently filed lawsuits have only just been filed and have not yet made their way to the dispositive motion stage. However, there are also other earlier-filed SPAC-related lawsuits pending, involving SPAC-related transactions that preceded the current SPAC wave. One of these earlier filed securities lawsuits involves Alta Mesa Resources, a company that collapsed within the first year after it was formed in a 2018 merger with a SPAC. On April 14, 2021, Southern District of Texas Judge George C. Hanks, Jr. denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss in the Alta Mesa case, in a ruling that may be of interest in relation to the numerous more-recently filed SPAC-related lawsuits. A copy of the order denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss can be found here.
Continue Reading SPAC-Related Securities Suit Survives Dismissal Motion

Electric vehicle battery company Romeo Power, which became a publicly traded company through a December 2020 merger with a SPAC, has been hit with a securities class action lawsuit following a share price decline after its announcement of a disruption in its supply chain. The new lawsuit is interesting both because of the SPAC angle and because it resulted from supply chain issues. The new lawsuit against Romeo Power was, in fact, one of two securities suits filed last week arising out of supply chain disruption. As discussed below, supply chain disruption could represent an emerging new area of corporate and securities litigation exposure. I also discuss below the fact that the new lawsuit involves yet another de-SPAC company in the electric vehicle industry
Continue Reading Tracking Two Emerging Securities Litigation Trends: SPACs and Supply Chain Disruption

As has been extensively noted on this site and elsewhere, the sheer level of SPAC-related action has been the one of the top business stories of the last few months. However, as I noted earlier this week, there have already been some distant early warning signs of possible problems on the SPAC horizon. Further developments this week suggest there could be growing trouble in SPAC-land. As discussed below, a newly released statement by the SEC about SPAC accounting potentially could cool off the hot market for SPACs, and a statement of intent by a leading plaintiffs’ firm raises the possibility of further SPAC-related litigation.
Continue Reading Trouble Brewing in SPAC-Land?

If things these days for the rest of you are the way they are for me, then all of you are basically finding out that SPACs are taking over your life. All SPACs, all the time. Wall to wall SPACs. At one level, this development should come as no surprise, as the sheer volume of SPAC activity is nothing short of astonishing. According to SPACInsider (here), since January 1, 2020, there have been a total of 554 SPAC IPOs completed – 308 in the three and a half months of 2021 alone. A further 261 SPAC IPO Registrations are currently pending. A staggering 435 post-IPO SPACs are currently in the process of trying to identify merger partners.  Along with this wave of financial activity has come an accompanying flow of SPAC-related news and information. I have identified below just a few of the many SPAC-related items that crossed my desk in the last week; the selected items underscore the opportunities and risks involved in the SPAC-crazy world that we all now inhabit. And as also noted below, there could be some hints of a slowdown as well.
Continue Reading All SPACs, All the Time

SPAC transactions have been a massive phenomenon in the U.S. for the last 18 months, and now it appears that the financial trend may be catching on overseas as well. In the following guest post, Jane Childs, Luke Mooney, Aiden M. McCormack and Martin Penn of the DLA Piper law firm take at look at the possibilities for the SPAC trends to spread to the U.K. A version of this article previously was published as a DLA Piper client memo. I would like to thank the authors for allowing me to publish their article as a guest post on this site. I welcome guest post submissions from responsible authors on topics of interest to this blog’s readers. Please contact me directly if you would like to submit a guest post. Here is the authors’ article.
Continue Reading Guest Post: Are SPACs Crossing the Pond? Implications for D&O Insurers