Latin America has built more and more unicorns in a short time (the most recent ones include Clip, Creditas, Kavak, Loft, VTEX). As tech companies mature, founders look at the gleaming billboards in Times Square and think of the obvious way to generate liquidity for investors and the company: ring the IPO bell. It is also possible to do a direct listing (when a company launches its pre-existing shares on a stock exchange, but without hiring banks to underwrite the transaction, as in an IPO).
Yet, a new instrument (created about 20 years ago in the United States, but which only gained the spotlight last year) wants to offer Latin American startups a faster way to list and create new shares in the U.S.: the SPAC (Special-Purpose Acquisition Company). So far, no Latin American technology company has been listed through a SPAC, but four newly launched vehicles, Alpha Capital, Valor Latitude, SoftBank, and DILA Capital, have already begun the hunt for the first deal. LABS reached out to these SPACs to talk about their search for target companies in the region. Only SoftBank declined to comment on its $200 million SPAC launched in January this year.
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