Wow that seems like the kind of behaviour you'd see in a massive speculative bubble.

People buying blank cheque companies without knowing what they're going to get.

Once the SPAC has identified a company to buy, investors in the SPAC get a choice to either stay invested or get their money back with interest. So it's only a blank check initially, but not once it matters. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-08/spac-m...

I'm not sure I buy that - you're only likely to find out it was a bad idea after the takeover, because the deal is deliberately opaque, early investors get special rights, it may only be for a small part of the private company's value, and the private company has not usually published all the data required of a public company.

There are very good reasons IPOs require all sorts of public documentation and due diligence. All that regulation which SPACs attempt to side-step is there because of previous scams run in just the same style as SPACs.

They are reminiscent of the weird companies formed during the South Sea Bubble e.g. A company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage but no-one to know what it is

If you don’t like what the SPAC is going to do then you can get your money back before it’s used in the acquisition.

Don't forget skimping out on the fees and money left on the table when dealing with a traditional investment bank.

SPACs acquire targets for significantly less than the potential IPO price, and their are still fees and deal costs associated with the merger, so from the target's perspective, you still end up with less than you would with a traditional IPO even after the fees of a traditional investment bank.

So why would a company ever go the SPAC route? SPACs are all about avoiding the (financial) disclosure required for a company going public the traditional way, and if you take a look at the list of companies getting acquired by SPACs this year, every single one of them has a red flag that would make their IPO risky (see, e.g., We).

There is direct listing (DPO). Spotify and Slack did that.