(Bloomberg) -- MELI Kaszek Pioneer Corp, a blank-check company sponsored by Latin America’s e-commerce giant MercadoLibre Inc. and venture capital firm Kaszek, has filed to go public.
The new company will seek to purchase a Latin American tech firm, according to a statement. BofA Securities, Goldman Sachs, Allen & Company and JPMorgan are expected be the underwriters for the offering, which consists on the offering of 25 million ordinary shares at an initial price of $10 apiece. Shares are expected to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker MEKA.
Read More: MercadoLibre Is Changing the Way Latin Americans Shop—and Pay
MercadoLibre Kaszek Pioneer, which has an office in Miami, has 24 months from when it completes its IPO to find a target which could include companies in commerce, financial services, logistics, healthcare, education, enterprise software and entertainment. The SPAC will consider targets that have partnerships with the “MercadoLibre ecosystem,” including firms that deliver complementary products to the e-commerce and fintech giant’s offerings.
Globally, there are about about 448 blank-check firms looking for a deal, with combined capital of about $133 billion, according to SPACResearch.com. Of those, there are about a dozen firms looking for targets in Latin America. There have been few deals in the region so far, including a Cantor Fitzgerald SPAC that targeted Satellogic, a satellite company with headquarters in Montevideo, Uruguay. Brazil’s Embraer SA is in talks to merge Eve Urban Air Mobility, its electric vehicle unit, with a SPAC.
The SPAC brings back together key members of MercadoLibre’s founding team, including co-founder Hernan Kazah and former chief financial officer Nicolas Szekasy, both of who left the company in 2011 to co-found the early-stage venture capital fund Kaszek. Kazah and MercadoLibre’s current CFO, Pedro Arnt, will be co-CEO’s at MELI Kaszek Pioneer, according to its prospectus. MercadoLibre chairman Marcos Galperin and Szekasy will be among special advisers to the SPAC.
Kaszek has invested in companies including Brazilian fintech Nubank and Mexican used-car platform Kavak across the region. Kaszek and MercadoLibre had also made joint investments recently, including in ed-tech company DigitalHouse.
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