Wunderlich forms 'blank check company,' IPO priced at $200M

MEAGAN NICHOLS | MEMPHIS BUSINESS JOURNAL

Raise money through an initial public offering (IPO); acquire an existing company.

That is the goal of a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) — also called a “blank check company” — and that is now the objective of one well-known Memphis businessman.

Gary Wunderlich, who founded the investment firm Wunderlich Securities in 1996, is no stranger to closing big deals. He sold that company to B. Riley Financial Inc. in 2017 for $67 million.

And rather than retire, he — along with Rick Hendrix and Robert Feinstein, both based in Washington, D.C. — founded Live Oak Merchant Partners. An advisory services and capital business, Live Oak was established to primarily work with middle-market companies.

Now, Wunderlich and partners are taking their latest venture a step further.

“Forming a SPAC is a natural extension of what we are doing at Live Oak Merchant Partners,” Wunderlich said. “We have been very busy closing an M&A transaction, financing our first portfolio company, and now issuing the SPAC. With the SPAC, we are looking for a $500 million to $1.5 billion company that has a need for liquidity and wants to become a public company."

Live Oak Acquisition Corp. was established as a blank-check company with an IPO pricing of $200 million. That offering was priced at 20,000,000 units at $10 per unit. The units were listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “LOAK.U” on May 6.

Under this corporation, Hendrix will serve as the CEO, Wunderlich as president, Andrea Tarbox as the CFO, and Ross Berner as COO.

Jefferies LLC is the book-running manager for the offering. BMO Capital Markets Corp. and BTIG LLC are the acting co-managers.

While Live Oak Acquisition is open to pursuing a company in any industry, it plans to focus its search on those in the financial services, industrial, business services, and real estate sectors.