- Investment bank FT Partners and private equity firm Bregal Sagemount are seeking to raise $400 million through a blank-check company.
- The partners intend to take a financial technology, software, or other tech company public.
- FT Partners has advised on four fintech SPACs, including one that closed in late December.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
One of the leading financial technology-focused boutique investment banks is raising its own blank-check company after advising on several such deals.
San Francisco-based FT Partners is teaming up with New York-based private equity firm Bregal Sagemount to launch Independence Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company.
The duo filed Friday to raise $400 million for the SPAC, advised by Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.
A representative for FT Partners declined to comment, and representatives from Bregal Sagemount didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Independence Holdings is set up to take a financial technology, software, or other tech company public. FT Partners has advised four fintechs going public via SPAC, most recently representing home services platform Porch.com’s $523 million deal with PropTech Acquisition Corporation, which closed on December 23.
FT Partners’ founder and CEO Steve McLaughlin – deemed one of Silicon Valley’s six favorite bankers by Insider in 2016 – and Sagemount founder Eugene Yoon will serve as co-chairman of the SPAC. FT Partners managing director John Lawrence Furlong will be CEO.
The executives have a long history at Goldman Sachs. Prior to founding FT Partners, McLaughlin was one of the firm’s earliest fintech bankers. Yoon was the head of private equity for Goldman’s Americas special situations group. And Furlong was a Goldman investment banker who focused on fintech.
Independence Holdings joins a bevy of other fintech-focused SPACs seeking acquisition targets. Goldman Sachs called 2020 “the year of the SPAC” with few signs of slowing for 2021. Last year, 229 US SPACs raised $76 billion – five times as much as 2019.
Major fintech SPAC deals include SoFi, which is going public via a merger with a SPAC backed by billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya announced last month.
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