The funny thing is that this was actually the third SPAC boom. I cut my teeth on Wall Street in 2008 and they were all the rage then too: "SPACs have a distast

The funny thing is that this was actually the third SPAC boom. I cut my teeth on Wall Street in 2008 and they were all the rage then too: "SPACs have a distasteful reputation due to a number of scandals associated with them in the 1980s. But like Frankenstein arisen from the dead, they are back. Initially, when they first reappeared on the scene the major banks and M&A law firms refused to represent them. Morgan Joseph and Ladenburg Thalmann did the hard work of establishing a market." [1] Also, I don't think anyone launching a SPAC believes they are about democratizing access to certain deals. They're just another structure for raising funds for acquisitions. If the status quo is doing it through private equity firms, an alternative structure is search funds for the small deals and SPACs for the large deals. [1] https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/the-unseen-mergers-boom-spacs/ https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2008/01/06/...