Craig McCaw

Craig McCaw, the low-key and mysterious billionaire known for his pioneering work in the telecom industry, is heading up a new Seattle-area “blank check” company that filed for an IPO last week.

Holicity is aiming to raise around $250 million as a blank check firm, also known as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, which typically do not have an established business and are used to raise funds via public offering for a merger or acquisition. More companies, including DraftKings and Nikola Corp., are using the tactic amid the COVID-19 crisis as an alternative to the volatile IPO market, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Axios’ Dan Primack said the SPAC surge is driven in part by “public equity froth.”

“SPACs, not direct listings, are the 2020 challenge to IPOs and IPO bankers,” he reported earlier this month.

In its IPO prospectus filing, Holicity says it intends to “initially focus our search on identifying a prospective target business in the technology, media and telecommunications (“TMT”) industries in the United States and other developed countries.”

McCaw, 70, previously led McCaw Cellular Communications, Nextel Communications and Clearwire, helping lay the groundwork for much of today’s telecommunications technology. He sold McCaw to AT&T for $11.5 billion in 1994. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $1.8 billion.

He co-founded Holicity with Randy Russell, a former Deutsche Bank and Bank of America exec who leads Pendrell subsidiary Pendrell Financial Services.

Blank check firms “have historically been considered dodgy investment vehicles, but in recent years some well-respected names in finance have used them to raise capital that can be plowed into companies that may have trouble raising it on their own,” the Seattle Times noted in its report on the IPO filing.

Here are more details from the filing, outlining Holicity’s strategy:

“We will seek to capitalize on the experience of our co-Founders, Craig McCaw and Randy Russell, who together have nearly 70 years of combined operating, investing and financing experience. Mr. McCaw’s skills as a serial entrepreneur across public and private markets, and Mr. Russell’s experience as a senior investment banker and trusted advisor to a broad range of companies and c-suite executives in the Telecommunications, Media and Technology (“TMT”) industry and leading private equity firms, represent a compelling combination. We believe our Founders’ distinctive and complementary backgrounds can facilitate a positive, transformational outcome in an initial business combination.

Opportunities for a potential business combination will be developed through our multi-decade relationships and proprietary network of corporate executives, family offices, financial sponsors, investment bankers, private investors, and strategic advisors. We intend to be proactive and highly selective in sourcing potential targets. We will focus our efforts on opportunities where our founders’ strategic vision, operating expertise, deep relationships, and capital markets experience can be catalysts to enhance the growth, competitive position and financial upside in an initial business combination. We intend to identify and execute an initial business combination within the TMT industry in the United States and other developed countries, although we may pursue targets in any business, industry, sector or geographical location.”

McCaw is currently co-CEO and chairman of Seattle-area investment group Pendrell, and chairman and CEO of private equity firm Eagle River Inc. Former Clearwire exec and current Pendrell CFO Steve Ednie is CFO of Holicity. Another ex-Clearwire colleague, R. Gerard Salemme, is listed as a director.

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