Oabay Inc., which provides trade credit digital transformation solutions, through its wholly-owned subsidiary in mainland China, is merging with a blank-cheque firm in a $393-million deal to commence trading on the Nasdaq.
The merger with the Nasdaq-listed Bayview Acquisition Corp is anticipated to close in the second half of 2024, according to a company release. As a result of the combination, Oabay shareholders will receive $300 million in stocks.
Alongside the merger, Oabay said it will try to fundraise at least $15 million through private investment in public equity (PIPE).
Bayview Acquisition, led by Xin Wang, managing partner at Beijing-headquartered BHR Partners; and Yuk Man Lau, partner at Chinese investment firm Guoxing Capital, raised $60 million in its upsized initial public offering (IPO) in the US, according to a release in December 2023.
Previously known as Bohai Harvest, BHR Partners is one of China’s oldest private equity funds — founded in 2013 by US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden; his former business associate Devon Archer; and Christopher Heinz, heir to the fortune of multi-billion-dollar American food company Heinz.
The deal arrives at one of the chillest time for the special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) transactions in the US market with only six SPAC IPOs being completed in Q1 2024. That was far from the SPAC frenzy back in the same period of 2021 when 298 SPAC IPOs were sealed, according to data from the accounting and consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).