RedBall Acquisition Corp. (NYSE:RBAC) announced over the weekend that it will not complete a transaction before its August 17 deadline and it intends to liquidate its trust.
Its shares will cease trading on August 16 and the SPAC is set to return about $10.02 per share to investors shortly after this date.
RedBall was an eye-catching SPAC when it IPO’d in August 2020, raised right as the SPAC boom was revving up. Sponsored by sports-focused investment group RedBird and including for MLB executive Billy “Moneyball” Beane on its Board, RedBall was the focus of hopes of an exciting new kind of SPAC deal.
It did aim high out of the gate and was reportedly long in talks with Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Boston Red Sox and Liverpool Football Club in the English Premier League, which would have undoubtedly been a multi-billion-dollar deal. But, those talks led to naught and it ultimately signed a definitive agreement with event ticket marketplace SeatGeek in October 2021.
This deal also terminated in June as the market turned, which gave RedBall little time left on its original deadline. Now, RedBall’s IPO and liquidation alongside that of Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Tontine (NYSE:PSTH) seem to bookend the previous SPAC cycle as the market now enters into a new one.
RedBall marks the 13th SPAC liquidation so far in 2022 and is unlikely to be the last. Of the 581 SPACs currently searching for a target, 92 have four months or less left on their clock.
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