Crescent Cove Advisors launching Spac to target South-east Asian tech firms
SAN Francisco-based tech investment firm Crescent Cove Advisors, founded by Singaporean Heng Jun Hong, has filed confidentially to launch a special purpose acquisition company (Spac) targeting South-east Asia's technology sector, sources said.
Crescent Cove is believed to be targeting an initial raise of around US$200 million and is expected to list shares of the Spac on Nasdaq.
Pandu Sjahrir, an investor based in Indonesia, is believed likely to join the Spac's board. He serves as a board member at Gojek, chairman of Sea Limited for Indonesia, and managing director of South-east Asia-focused investment firm Indies Capital Partners.
Value Partners co-founder Yeh V-Nee, a long-time limited partner with Crescent Cove and one of its biggest supporters, is thought to be interested in investing in the Spac, according to people familiar with the matter.
Crescent Cove was founded in 2016 by Mr Heng, who began working in the US after graduating with a bachelor's degree in business administration from the University of Michigan.
He was an analyst for two years at the now-defunct global investment bank Bear Stearns, where he worked in a multi-disciplinary role across technology, media and telecom (TMT), mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt capital markets.
Mr Heng later moved to an analyst role at Morgan Stanley for about a year before joining Argyle Street Management, a Hong Kong-based special situations fund co-founded by Yeh V-Nee. Mr Yeh was also the former chairman of Hsin Chong Group, a Hong Kong-listed construction company founded by his grandfather.
After three years at Argyle Street Management, Mr Heng joined the founding team of Hong Kong-based Myriad Asset Management to focus on credit and equity.
In 2016, he returned to the US to launch Crescent Cove Advisors with US$12 million in seed capital. The firm focuses on the lower middle-market TMT sector. It currently manages up to US$500 million in assets.
One of Crescent Cove's biggest bets was in Luminar, a US-based startup that makes sensors for self-driving vehicles. It invested a total of about US$100 million in Luminar since 2016, prior to the company's merger with a Spac last year that made its 25-year-old chief executive and founder Austin Russell a billionaire.
Mr Russell will be a senior adviser to Crescent Cove's Spac, sources told The Business Times (BT).
Spacs have recently seen a surge in popularity as companies seek a route to public markets without the lengthy scrutiny and cost of the traditional initial public offering process. A total of US$104.7 billion was raised via these blank-cheque vehicles announced last year, far eclipsing the US$16.2 billion raised by those announced in 2019, Bloomberg data showed.
In South-east Asia, tech firms that are reportedly eyeing the public markets include Grab, Gojek, Tokopedia, Traveloka and Trax.
Tokopedia had reportedly received a merger offer from Bridgetown Holdings, a Spac backed by billionaires Richard Li and Peter Thiel.
Prominent companies that have opted for a US public listing via a Spac include Nikola Corp, DraftKings and Danimer Scientific.
Crescent Cove's Spac is maintaining flexibility to look at the US, although its own portfolio of companies are not being considered initially as merger targets, BT understands.
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