Area firm raises $420 million for 'blank check' investment

The hottest thing going on Wall Street right now is a SPAC, or a special purpose acquisition company, also known as a blank check company. Now Tampa-based investment firm Anzu Partners, run in part by a Rhodes Scholar, is getting in on the action — with an eye-popping $420 million capital raise.

The gist on SPACs: Investors raise money though an IPO that’s essentially a shell company, an entity created to acquire another business. The investors in that entity, the SPAC, don’t know what company the founders will buy with the funds. SPACs have been around for decades, occasionally used by small companies with issues going for a straight-up IPO. The SPAC process allows companies to raise money faster, and do it without the scrutiny of a traditional IPO.   

Some 200 companies went public in 2020 through a SPAC, according to IPO analytics firm Renaissance Capital, raising about $64 billion. The trend exploded even more in 2021, with $77 billion invested in SPACs in the first quarter alone, reports data firm SPAC Research. Companies that used the SPAC process include Virgin Galactic and DraftKings, while SPAC investors range from Bill Gates to sports icons Alex Rodriquez and Shaquille O’Neal and singer Ciara.

Add Whitney Haring-Smith to that list. A managing partner with Anzu Partners, Haring-Smith is one of the leaders behind that firm’s entry into the blank check company world, with its $420 million SPAC. Anzu Partners, says Haring-Smith, has 19 employees in its Tampa office, and other employees in Boston and San Diego.

Anzu’s SPAC started trading on the Nasdaq in early March under the symbol ANZUU. The capital raise, small by SPAC milestones on Wall Street, where several are funded well into the billions, is a big mark for a Tampa company. Haring-Smith, while declining to comment on the general SPAC frenzy, says the ANZU SPAC was oversubscribed at $420 million. “We think the opportunity we have is really strong,” Haring-Smith tells Coffee Talk.

Haring-Smith says little about Anzu’s acquisition plans for its SPAC, only that it will follow the mission of the investment firm: to find and cultivate early stage industrial and life science technology companies. “We want to invest in companies that have the capacity to transfer our lives for the better,” Haring-Smith says. “We want to be part of generating progress.”

Haring-Smith, who earned bachelors and masters degrees simultaneously from Yale, then a doctorate from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, is part of a team of business stars at the helm of Anzu’s SPAC. The team, according to public filings, “has led and executed multiple global transactions (and) managed IPO spin-outs with over $5 billion in enterprise value.” It includes Sarasota resident William Wulfsohn, former chairman and CEO of chemical giant Ashland Global Holdings and onetime chairman of motor oil brand Valvoline.

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