Latham & Watkins Advises Hedosophia on €400 Million Blank Cheque Company IPO

Latham & Watkins advised Hedosophia Group on the launch of Hedosophia European Growth, a blank cheque company that successfully raised €400 million in a private placement for the purposes of completing a business combination with a European technology company. Hedosophia European Growth has begun trading on the Euronext Amsterdam.

Hedosophia has set out to provide a best-in-class version of the US SPAC model to the European market, innovating three key features in the SPAC concept: demonstrating strong alignment of interest with public shareholders by subscribing for 2,000,000 units for an aggregate purchase price of €20 million; covering the cost of the negative interest of up to 56 bps per annum on the funds held in the Escrow Account; and ensuring strong sponsor alignment through an ambitious promote structure at business combination and share price hurdles being achieved over 10 years.

Hedosophia Group is a significant investor in Europe’s leading technology companies, led by co-founder and Chief Executive Office Ian Osborne.

The Latham team was led by London corporate partners Chris Horton and Mike Turner, with associate Tom Channing. Advice on US corporate matters was provided by partner Ryan Benedict and capital markets lawyer Irene Pistotnik.