While looking for the business combination for their first US SPAC, Galileo Acquisition Corp, listed on the NYSE in October 2019, Italian manager Luca Giacometti and his partners Alberto Recchi and Alberto Pontonio waste no time and list a second one, also on the NYSE. The new SPAC, which went public last week, was baptized Americas Technology Acquisition Corp. and is dedicated to the search for a company or more targets active in the tech, media and tlc sector (see here the press release and here the file to the Sec).
Sponsor of the new Spac is ATAC Limited Partnership, controlled by ATAC Holdings LLC, which in turn is headed by Fifth Partners, a private equity firm based in Dallas, Texas. But Mrs Giacometti, Recchi and Pontonio are included in the management team and are in turn promoters of the initiative.
Moreover, Mr. Giacometti is a veteran of the SPACs. In fact, he was among the promoters of the Italian Spacs Glenalta, Glenalta Food and Made in Italy 1 and of the pre-booking company Ipo Challenger. As for Mr. Recchi, formerly Credit Suisse, he founded the New York merchant bank Ampla Capital in 2019; while Mr. Pontonio has 25 years of experience in the financial sector and is the financial advisor to Raymond James.
The three Italian managers launched the new SPAC together with Lisa Harris (chairman of SPAC), founder of Align Capital, a private equity company based in Austin, Texas, and Jorge Marcos (ceo), who in turn is over 10 years old. experience in private equity with a focus on energy and natural resources. has more than 10 years of experience in private equity focused on energy and natural resources.
Americas Technology Acquisition raised a total of 115 million dollars, of which 100 millions were placed in private placements and other 15 millions as a result of exercising the over allotment option. In total, 11.5 million shares were placed at a price of 10 dollar per share. Each share is associated with a half warrant which gives the right to purchase an ordinary share of SPAC at a price of 11.50 dollars each.
Last year the three Italian managers had instead launched Galileo with the support of Magnetar Capital, a well-known US private equity operator also active in Italy, raising 138 million dollars from investors. As for Galileo, last November it entered into negotiations to acquire the well-known modeling agency Elite Model World, but then the negotiations ended without anything happening and now Galileo is looking for a new target (see here a previous article by BeBeez). For this task, however, the SPAC still has a little less than a year and in the meantime the market does not seem worried and the stock is today above the ipo price of 10 dollars, while in mid-November it was around 9.9 dollars.
The SPACs experienced a real boom in the US this year, raising over 67 billion dollar from investors. Among the vehicles that have just been listed there are also two SPACs that have promoters of Italian origin:the first one is Investindustrial Acquisition Corp, promoted by private equity firm Investindustrial, founded by Andrea Bonomi,which raised 402.5 million dollars, including the option of over-allottment. Including however the forward purchase agreement signed by the sponsor on other shares for 250 million dollars, the SPAC reaches the firepower of 652.5 million dollars (see here a previous article by BeBeez); the second SPAC is ScION Tech Growth I, promoted by ION Investment Management, founded by Andrea Pignataro, which went public yesterday after raising 500 million dollars from investors, which could raise another 75 millions after exercising the over-allotment option and that. Also in this case, including a forward purchase agreement signed by the sponsor on other shares for 100-300 million dollars, the SPAC could reach a maximum firepower of 875 million dollars (see here a previous article by BeBeez).
