The great un-SPAC-ing

More than 800 SPACs raised capital between May 2020 and December 2021. Underwriting fees were collected; questionable incentives and complexity remained.

SPACs used to be a curious capital-markets sideshow: complex, obscure, hardly novel. A conventional initial public offering underwritten by investment banks was the marker of corporate maturity; merging with a pile of cash and entering the stockmarket by the backdoor was not. This changed when stockmarkets rallied from their covid-induced lows.

Find out more from The Economist HERE.

Banking & Payment Trends that Will Get Hotter in 2021

There are 5 banking and payments trends that are going to be really hot in 2021; that is according to a piece by Safwan Zaheer writing in a blog post in The Financial Brand.

And what are these 5 trends?

1. Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) will take off.
2. Venmo will emerge as a new type of payment tender.
3. “Embedded Banking” is going to grow faster as more institutions offer banking capabilities to non-banks.
4. Digital currencies and Stablecoins are going to gain major traction.
5. There are going to be more financial institution mergers in 2021.

Read all the details at The Financial Brand HERE  

The Risk of In Market Mergers

From Bank Director –

C.K. Lee of Commerce Street Capital explains both the pros and cons of in-market mergers.

Investors Weigh In On Growth

Three leading banking analysts discuss what bank investors consider key in terms of building a strong and profitable business.

The Anatomy of a Merger of Equals

Deals labelled merger of equals (MOE) have a controversial history. In this video, Frank Cicero of Jefferies & Company, Inc., describes how boards and management teams should evaluate, structure and execute a MOE transaction that benefits the shareholders on both sides.