Sternlicht Blank-Check Firm Files for $400 Million IPO

Apr 30, 2020 | News | 0 comments

 A special purpose acquisition company co-founded by billionaire real estate executive Barry Sternlicht is planning to raise about $400 million in an initial public offering.

Jaws Acquisition Corp. plans to issue 40 million units at $10 apiece, according to a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It intends to target companies in growth-oriented industries and not compete with Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group, which focuses on real estate, lodging, oil and gas and energy infrastructure, according to the filing, which confirmed a Bloomberg News report.

Jaws’s founders are its chairman, Sternlicht, and Chief Executive Officer Joe Dowling, who also runs Brown University’s endowment. The company counts Doug Ostrover as a director. Ostrover was a founder of Blackstone Group Inc.’s credit arm, GSO Capital Partners.

Going public by merging with blank-check companies has become popular for companies hoping to access capital in a volatile stock market. Fantasy sports operator DraftKings Inc. went public last week in a reverse merger.

Sternlicht, initially bearish on the markets at the beginning of the pandemic, said that he was less optimistic about the U.S. economy and expects it to recover slower than China’s.

“It’ll be slower here, depending on what happens on the medical front,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV this month. “This quarter will be a mess.”

Blank-check companies raised a combined $5.4 billion in U.S. initial public offerings, about a third of this year’s overall fundraising volume, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares to $3.7 billion from the same period last year.

Source: Bloomberg

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