Gabelli Enters SPAC IPO Game (GBL, VZ)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Last night there was a filing from Gabelli Entertainment &  Telecommunications Acquisition Corp. to come public via an initial public offering for a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) or a blank-check company. This is for a sale of $200 million in units with each unit consisting of 1 share of common stock and one warrant with a $7.50 strike price.  This has ties to GAMCO Investors Inc. (NYSE: GBL) and even to Verizon Communications (NYSE: VZ) via an ex-CFO.

Gabelli Entertainment & Telecommunications Acquisition Corp. is anewly organized blank check company formed toacquire or merge withone or more operating businesses or assets in the media, entertainment,telecommunications or financial services industries.

Underwriter Ladenburg Thalmann & Co. Inc. has been given a 45-dayover-allotment option to purchase up to 3,000,000 additional units.The listing is set to occur on the American Stock Exchange, yet noticker has been designated.

As you likely guessed by the name, Mario Gabelli is the Chairman, and the CEOis listed as Frederic Salerno.  For those of you who do not knowSalerno by name, he was CFO and Vice Chairman of Verizon (NYSE: VZ)until he retired in 2002.  Mario Gabelli is of course the founder ofGAMCO Investors, Inc. (NYSE: GBL).

What is interesting about this one is that certain corporate officershave also formed another SPAC which is meant to come public at the same time.

Jon C. Ogg
August 5, 2008

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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.

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