SPAC sparkle wins over health techs

The offer of a massive pile of easily accessible cash has a way of changing people’s minds. Special-purpose acquisition companies have swept up several health tech groups this year despite their targets having other plans.

“There are a lot of Spacs out there at the moment looking for the right story,” says Veronique Ameye, executive vice-president at Lumiradx, a diagnostics company currently reversing into a Spac. The feeding frenzy that has characterised 2021 is arguably a consequence not of start-ups’ need for an exit so much as Spacs’ ardour for targets – and it looks likely to continue for some time.