MSP Recovery to go public via $32.6 billion SPAC deal By Reuters

(Reuters) -MSP Recovery, which offers services to recover money from Medicare and Medicaid secondary payments, agreed to go public through a merger with a blank-check firm, giving the combined company an enterprise value of $32.6 billion.

The deal with Lionheart Acquisition Corp II is expected to fetch $230 million in proceeds for MSP, it said on Monday.

Florida-based MSP, led by billionaire entrepreneur John Ruiz, specializes in recovery of Medicare and Medicaid payments. Its platform can be used to identify and recover claims its clients “should never have paid”.

The company earns a fee only after a successful recovery.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are shell companies that raise funds through an initial public offering to take a private company public through a merger at a later date.

At $32.6 billion, the merger is second in size only to the nearly $40 billion deal inked in April between Southeast Asia’s Grab and Altimeter Growth Corp.

The MSP deal is also the largest since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it was considering new rules to protect investors amid a surge in the use SPACs as capital-raising vehicles.

In the past few months, biotech company Ginkgo Bioworks and SoftBank-backed mortgage startup Better HoldCo have announced multi-billion dollar deals with blank-check vehicles.