Morgan Creek To Close SPAC-Related ETF

The ETF industry embraced the special purpose acquisition company craze in late 2020, when the first fund covering the category kicked off. The Morgan Creek - Exos SPAC Originated ETF (SPXZ) will be the first of those funds to close, next month, according to the company announcement on Wednesday.  

SPXZ, which is one of two SPAC-related ETFs offered by Morgan Creek, has about $6 million in assets and launched in January 2021. The fund is slated to see its last day of trading on or around Aug. 18.  

Morgan Creek’s other SPAC ETF is the Morgan Creek - Exos Active SPAC Arbitrage ETF (CSH), which has nearly $9 million in assets under management.  

SPXZ brings the total number of ETFs that are projected to have closed by the end of August 2022 to 66.  

During the same period last year, there were only 37 closures completed. 2021 was the slowest year for ETF closures in roughly a decade, despite its record number of launches.  

ETF closures hit record levels in 2020, largely due to the pandemic-related market crash, but that took care of a lot of dead wood in the industry, resulting in the closure slowdown even as launches hit another record in 2021.   

Between the last quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of this year, eight SPAC-related ETFs rolled out on the U.S. market. While investors saw SPACs as a way to take advantage of the growth potential of what one issuer CEO described as “private equity style IPOs,” most of them have not gathered significant assets. The largest is the CrossingBridge Pre-Merger SPAC ETF (SPC), which has almost $63 million. Almost all the others have less than $25 million.  

Contact Heather Bell at [email protected]