In the summer of 2019, Chamath Palihapitiya, a billionaire venture capital investor, announced that his public shell company would merge with Richard Branson’s spaceflight business, Virgin Galactic.
It was early in what has become a Wall Street phenomenon: using a special purpose acquisition company like his — known as a SPAC or blank-check firm — to take a private business public, bypassing the typical initial public offering process. READ MORE