Former Goldman Asia Banker Hitchner Raises $360 Million for SPAC

Ambereen Choudhury, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The former head of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Asia-Pacific unit outside Japan raised $360 million for a blank-check company targeting health-care deals in the region, adding to the wave of former bankers joining the investing craze.

Ken Hitchner, who was chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs for the region, is teaming up with Richard Li, former head of Great Wall Pan Asia Asset Management Ltd., in the special purpose acquisition company, according to a U.S. filing this month.

Blank-check companies, which raised a record $83 billion on U.S. exchanges last year, are quickly spreading to Asia. SoftBank Group Corp. plans to raise as much as $630 million through two new SPACs, the Tokyo-based investor said last week. Former Deutsche Bank AG and Lehman Brothers banker Joaquin Rodriguez Torres is talking to more than a dozen companies in the region for his SPAC that raised $345 million.

SPACs raise money from investors and then seek to purchase another firm, taking it public without having to go through an initial public offering. Blank-check companies completed a record $26 billion of share sales in January alone, predominantly in the U.S. as they tap into strong equity markets.

Hitchner is chairman of HH&L Acquisition Co., while Li is the CEO, according to the statement. The company offered 36 million units at $10 each, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker HHLA/U.

Hitchner is a former navy pilot who joined Goldman Sachs in 1991 and has served as global head of the health-care banking group and global co-head of technology, media and telecom. He retired from Goldman Sachs in 2019.