SPAC/Blank Check IPO Filing: GF Acquisition Corp. (GFX)

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Last night, we saw another SPAC IPO filing with the SEC.  GF ACQUISITION CORP. filed as a Specialty Purpose Acquisition Company to come public via a sale of 8 million units at $10.00 per unit in an $80 million filing,

Pali Capital and Morgan Joseph are the underwriters and the total came to 9.2 million units or $92 million if the overallotment is exercised.  Each unit consists of one share of common stock along with one warrant with a $7.50 strike price.

GF Acquisition Corp. is a newly formed blank check company that has not identified any target companies nor is it limited to any specific sector.  This will trade under the proposed ticker of "GFX" on the American Stock Exchange.  While we have this listed as a SPAC, it is more accurately a real BLANK CHECK company since it has no earmarked targets.

This is not management’s first pony ride in the world of SPAC’s.  Ronald Valenta, John Johnson and certain initial stockholders were responsible for organizing General Finance Corporation, another blank check company which completed an initial public offering in September 2006 and raised gross proceeds of $69 million. In September 2007 General Finance paid approximately $64 million to complete the acquisition of RWA Holdings Pty Limited and its subsidiaries, or Royal Wolf.

Two of the company’s initial stockholders and members of the board of directors currently serve as executive officers of General Finance.  Ronald Valenta is a member of its Board of Directors and is the President and Chief Executive Officer of General Finance, and John Johnson is the Chief Operating Officer of General Finance.

You can join our open email distribution list to hear about other SPAC’s, Blank Check Companies, IPO’s, key financings, secondary offerings, spin-offs and other special situation previews.

Jon C. Ogg
April 22, 2008

Jon Ogg is a producer of and editor for both the Special Situations newsletter and the "10 Stocks Under $10" weekly newsletter for a673b.bigscoots-temp.com; he can be reached at [email protected] and he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

Featured Reads

Our top personal finance-related articles today. Your wallet will thank you later.

Continue Reading

Top Gaining Stocks

CBOE Vol: 1,568,143
PSKY Vol: 12,285,993
STX Vol: 7,378,346
ORCL Vol: 26,317,675
DDOG Vol: 6,247,779

Top Losing Stocks

LKQ
LKQ Vol: 4,367,433
CLX Vol: 13,260,523
SYK Vol: 4,519,455
MHK Vol: 1,859,865
AMGN Vol: 3,818,618