The SPAC boom cost investors billions. Insiders in the companies that went public were on the other side of the trade.
Executives and early investors in companies that went public via special-purpose acquisition companies sold shares worth $22 billion through well-timed trades, profiting before share prices collapsed.
Some of the biggest winners were Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores’s investment firm Platinum Equity, British billionaire Richard Branson and convicted Nikola founder Trevor Milton. They were among many insiders who got shares on the cheap and sold them as they rose in value, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of insider-trading disclosures associated with more than 200 companies that did SPAC deals.
Source: Company Insiders Made Billions Before SPAC Bust – WSJ