(Bloomberg) - One of Europe’s biggest special-purpose acquisition companies failed to find a takeover target and will be dissolved, ending a two-year effort by bankers Jean Pierre Mustier and Diego De Giorgi to capitalize on the blank-check boom.
Pegasus Acquisition Co. Europe BV, which is also backed by billionaire Bernard Arnault and French asset manager Tikehau Capital SCA, will propose to shareholders at the May 2 annual meeting that the company be liquidated, Pegasus said in a March 21 statement on its website.
Mustier, a former chief executive officer of UniCredit SpA, and De Giorgi, a former Bank of America Corp. executive, raised 500 million euros ($545 million) in Pegasus’s April 2021 initial public offering, with the goal of finding an acquisition in financial services.
The IPO was part of a flood of SPAC listings in 2020 and 2021. Many of those companies now are running into deadlines to complete deals. The Financial Times reported earlier on Pegasus’s plan to dissolve.
Pegasus won’t meet its May 3 deadline to find an acquisition, the company said. Shareholders will receive about €10 a share — equal to the IPO price — or slightly less, according to the statement.
By Phil Serafino
