Cohn is the latest high-profile name to join the frenzy of Wall
Street dealmaking related to special purpose acquisition
companies (SPACs).
SPACs were considered a banking backwater a decade ago but have
emerged in 2020 as one of the most active areas on Wall Street,
driven by splashy deals for the likes of space tourism company
Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc and fantasy sports and gambling
company DraftKings Inc.
High-profile financiers such as Bill Ackman, Michael Klein and
Chamath Palihapitiya as well as former U.S. House Speaker Paul
Ryan are among the sponsors for SPAC IPOs in 2020.
A SPAC is a shell company that raises money through an IPO to
buy an unspecified operating company to then take public,
usually within two years.
Cohn's SPAC, Cohn Robbins Holdings Corp, will look to sell 60
million units in an IPO at $10 apiece, and list on the New York
Stock Exchange under the symbol "CRHC.U".
The SPAC had previously been on file with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commision under the name CSR Acquisition Corp and
had planned to raise $300 million.
Cohn had been in talks with Robbins for the past month or so
about joining the SPAC, according to a person familiar with the
matter.
Formerly president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs
Group Inc, Cohn served in the Trump White House for a little
more than a year and was a driver of the administration's tax
overhaul enacted in 2017.
Robbins had told clients in February he was shuttering his
investment firm, Blue Harbour Group, to do something different.
Credit Suisse is the sole book-running manager on the Cohn
Robbins Holdings IPO.
(Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York; Editing by Tom Brown)
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