SPAC制度中投资者保护机制研究

Investor Protection Mechanism in the Special Purpose Acquisition Companies System

近年来,特殊目的并购公司(SPAC)受到全球各主要市场的关注。本文从法律和监管角度对SPAC在投资者保护上的制度设计进行详尽分析和评价。研究表明,美国证监会之所以对SPAC的首次公开发行实行相对宽松的监管,是因为SPAC自发地设计了对管理层的约束和激励、投资者话语权和独立信托账户三大投资者保护机制,为完成并购交易前的投资者提供了相对充分的保护;对SPAC在首次公开发行后进行的并购交易,美国证监会转而采取严格的信息披露监管策略,在信息披露时限、披露内容和可能施加的法律责任上均较一般并购交易更为严格。以SPAC相关实践作为他山之石,可为国内注册制改革下的证券市场监管和投资者保护提供借鉴。

As one of the latest trends in global securities markets,special purpose acquisition companies(SPACs)have attracted attentions of major markets.This paper intends to analyse SPACs’investor protection mechanism in detail.The results find that the U.S.Securities Exchange Commission(SEC)generally adopts a loose disclosure supervision strategy on SPACs.The reason why the SEC loosely supervised SPACs’initial public offering is that SPACs have designed three special investor protection mechanisms,i.e.,management constraints and incentives,investor’s voice and independent trust account,to provide sufficient protection for investors before M&A transactions.In the afterwards De-SPAC transactions,the SEC tends to be much more rigorous in its supervisions.On the basis of empirical finding,this paper provides inspiration on possible enhancement of supervision and investor protection in the A-share market of China.