Former Baseball Star Alex Rodriguez Files
With SEC To Form $575 Million SPAC
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission former baseball star Alex Rodriguez has launched Slam Corporation, a Special Purpose Acquisition Corporation (SPAC).
SPACs are investment vehicles that raise funds from investors that are then used to acquire a private company and take it public. SPACs have been all the rage since last year as the COVID-19 pandemic upended the traditional IPO roadshow. According to data from SPAC Insider, 248 blank-check companies raised $83 billion in 2020, while 118 SPACs had raised $35 billion so far in 2021.
The filing indicated that Rodriguez would lead Slam as its CEO and that it would seek acquisitions within the “sports, media, entertainment, health and wellness and consumer technology sectors.”
Billy Beane, a former Major League Baseball player and the executive for Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics who was featured in the book and movie “Moneyball,” is co-chairman of RedBall, a SPAC that recently failed in an attempt to take the parent company of the Boston Red Sox public. Slam’s focus will not be on these types of acquisitions.
Rodriguez and Beane joins several celebrities attaching themselves to SPACs including Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter, Gary Cohn, former Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles, Paul Ryan, Bill Ackman, Serena Williams, and Shaquille O’Neal, who is an adviser at the “Shaq SPAC”.
According to the filing, Slam is seeking to raise up to $575 million with the sale of stock and warrants at $10 per share.
Slam will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol SLAM once the deal is completed, the filing said.
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