Betsy Cohen's SPAC scraps $1.75 bln Pico merger deal

M3-Brigade Acquisition II

26/02/2022 24:02

Feb 25 (Reuters) - Fintech entrepreneur Betsy Cohen's
special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) on Friday terminated
its $1.75 billion merger agreement with Pico, citing a failure
by the technology services firm to deliver required financial
information.
    Cohen's FTAC Athena Acquisition Corp  FTAA.O  had agreed in
August last year to merge with Pico, a New York-based company
that provides financial firms with infrastructure hosting,
network connectivity, market data and other tech services.
 urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL4N2PB2N7
    There has been a steep decline in share prices of companies,
including Grab Holdings Ltd  GRAB.O  and BuzzFeed Inc  BZFD.O ,
that recently took the SPAC route to going public.
    Recent failed mergers include telecom services firm
Syniverse Technologies' $2.85 billion merger with M3-Brigade
Acquisition II Corp  MBAC.N  and investing app Acorns Grow's
$2.2 billion deal with Pioneer Merger Corp  PACX.O . 
    Since 2020, Cohen has clinched a series of deals with high
profile names including boutique investment bank Perella
Weinberg Partners  PWP.O , payments provider Payoneer  PAYO.O 
and Israel's online stock brokerage eToro.

 (Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by
David Gregorio)
 ((noor.hussain@thomsonreuters.com; Within U.S. +1 646 223 8780;
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