from the article: > People occasionally conflate these shell-company reverse mergers with the current boom in special purpose acquisition companies, but they a

from the article: > People occasionally conflate these shell-company reverse mergers with the current boom in special purpose acquisition companies, but they are really very different. A SPAC goes public and raises money specifically for the purpose of taking a private company public; it sells shares to the public and then has a public vote with a lot of disclosure to complete its merger. A reverse merger generally involves a public shell of a more or less defunct operating company (or at least one that pretended to have operations); the shell will be fairly closely held by a few insiders, and there will be no real money inside it. It is not a high-profile way to go public and raise money, the way a SPAC is; it’s a low-profile way to sneak into the public markets.