Bill Ackman is giving money back to shareholders. This week the hedge fund investor announced that his blank cheque vehicle, Pershing Square Tontine Holdings, would return the $4bn it raised two years ago, after failing to locate a suitable buyout target. He plans to keep looking. One day, he hopes, investors and their money will be back.
Ackman pitched PSTH as a unique Spac better aligned to the interests of ordinary investors than the tycoons who typically assemble blank cheque companies. But such innovation could not overcome a continued collapse in the Spac market.
Undeterred, Ackman intends to press ahead with another contraption he has invented, this time known as the Sparc. Here investors will give him cash for a deal only after he has picked out a target company. The “r” reflects a so-called rights offering.