(Reuters) – A blank-check company backed by China’s buyout firm Hony Capital on Thursday withdrew plans for a U.S. initial public offering, becoming the latest such entity to reverse course amid rising market volatility.
Hony Capital is one of China’s largest private equity firms and had aimed to raise $300 million for Hony Capital Acquisition Corp through the sale of shares and warrants priced at $10 apiece.
A number of so-called special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, have scrapped plans to list their shares on U.S. exchanges over the past few weeks, discouraged by volatile markets that many investors deem unfit for new stock flotations.
SPACs are listed shell entities which raises funds through an public offering with the intention of merging with a private company at a later date in an effort to take it public by sidestepping the hassles of an IPO.
Such mergers had taken U.S. capital markets by storm last year, when SPACs raised an unprecedented amount of capital and hit a record on merger volumes.
However, wild price swings in assets across global markets, spurred by the Ukraine war and expectations of aggressive monetary policy to curb surging inflation, have led to only a handful of companies list in the United States so far this year.
(Reporting by Sohini Podder in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)
