The Closing Bell: SPAC

EarlyBirdCapital was the creator of the new and improved shell acquisition fund, or so-called SPAC. The vehicle has become a hot product not only among smaller firms, but some of the larger banks such as Deutsche Bank and Citigroup too.

EarlyBirdCapital was the creator of the new and improved shell acquisition fund, or so-called SPAC. The vehicle has become a hot product not only among smaller firms, but some of the larger banks such as Deutsche Bank and Citigroup too.

Headed by Steve Levine and David Nussbaum, EarlyBird is no stranger to unusual pitches and quirky ideas. Last week, some CFW staffers realized just how discriminate EarlyBird’s executives have been over the past several years, when reviewing old footage from HBO’s Da Ali-G Show. In one episode, Sascha Baron Cohen, disguised as a goofed-up youth culture journalist, pitches a novel business idea to a number of venture capitalists and investment bankers: a special rubber glove designed to prevent ice cream cones from dripping all over one’s hand.

Who’s on the panel? Levine-- and he appears puzzled and then outright flabbergasted by the boneheaded pitch. “For me, I’m not going to walk around with a glove in my pocket in case I want to have an ice cream.” While some bankers at C.E. Unterberg Towbin appeared to be charmed by the glove idea, EarlyBird turned it down, along with a pitch to have the firm invent a Hover Board, the floating skateboard featured in Back To The Future II.