When Jessica Billingsley announced in October 2018 that she was taking Denver-based cannabis technology company MJ Freeway public by merging it with a so-called “blank-check” company, she was on the vanguard of an increasingly popular way for privately held companies to begin trading on public stock exchanges. Billingsley, the company’s co-founder and CEO, is one of several marijuana stakeholders who believe there are advantages for private cannabis companies to go public by merging with blank-check companies, which are officially known as special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Two cannabis SPACs—Silver Spike Acquisition Corp. and Subversive Capital Acquisition Corp.—recently announced deals worth more than $2 billion, providing the industry with an “injection of liquidity,” noted Mike Regan, founder of Denver-based MJResearch Co. About $3 billion in cannabis SPACs have launched since 2019, according to New York-based financial adviser Viridian Capital.
Marijuana Business Daily, 02/01/2021 02:03:00