(News Bulletin 247) – The “blank check” company did not find any targets corresponding to its criteria. It will thus stop its operations in July and return its cash to investors.
Pegasus Europe, the “Spac” supported by the French billionaire Bernard Arnault, the ex-CEO of the Italian bank Unicredit Jean-Pierre Mustier and Tikehau Capital, will be liquidated in July 2023 for lack of having found a company to acquire.
The announcement, spotted by the Financial Times, appears in a press release published on the Pegasus Europe website, and marks the end of “Europe’s largest Spac”, according to the British business daily.
A Spac, or “special purpose acquisition company”, is a company with no commercial activity whose purpose is to raise funds by entering a stock exchange in order to subsequently buy out a company. It therefore benefits from a simplified IPO process.
Nearly 500 million euros raised
Introduced in the spring of 2021 on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the “empty shell” of Pegasus Europe had given itself two years to find its target to acquire, after having raised 484 million euros.
However, Pegasus Europe will not succeed in acquiring a company “before the deadline of May 3, 2023, as defined in the company’s IPO prospectus approved by the Dutch Financial Markets Authority on April 29, 2021”, indicates the Spac.
“The co-CEOs of the company have recommended to the board of directors, which approved the resolution unanimously, to propose the dissolution and liquidation of the company” to the shareholders during the general meeting which will take place on 2 May, is still indicated in this report published at the end of March on its site.
Pegasus Europe was launched in early 2021 by the investment company Tikehau Capital and the holding company of Bernard Arnault’s family, Financière Agache, with the objective of eventually acquiring a company in the financial services sector.
The former CEO of the Italian bank Unicredit, Jean-Pierre Mustier, and Diego de Giorgi, a specialist in mergers and acquisitions who worked for Unicredit, also took part in the operation.
The same quartet of investors had also launched a second Spac in December 2021, named Pegasus Entrepreneurs, which was crowned with success since it was replaced in July 2022 on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange by the audiovisual entity FL Entertainment, a company which brings together the global giant of Banijay television and the sports betting operator Betclic.
(With AFP)
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