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ICR releases its January 2024 SPAC Market Update & Outlook report, which finds that the average value of SPAC IPOs took a 21 percent slide to $125 million in 2023. In addition, only 14 percent of last year’s mergers valued companies at $1 billion or more, down from 50 percent in 2022. On the up side, merger activity was steady at approximately 24 closed deals per quarter and liquidations decelerated. CleanTech wound up being the hottest sector for SPAC deal activity last year, accounting for $39 billion of the $70 billion in enterprise value for 2023. More than half (55 percent) of SPAC IPOs had Asia-based sponsors. For the year to come, the report says that a significant merger pipeline should result in solid activity, with more than 130 public SPACs seeking targets and another 140+ with pending mergers. “Strong public equity markets and improved investor sentiment should translate to a more robust ‘traditional’ IPO market in 2024,” said Niren Nazareth, managing director at ICR Capital.
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| Barry Bennett |
Former Avenue Strategies managing partner Barry Bennett and Douglas Watts, who ran the Urban Media Group, have entered into Deferred Prosecution Agreements to resolve allegations that they failed to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act and committed related offenses. The case concerned Avenue Strategies performing lobbying services for Qatar, under which a company was set up (under Bennett’s direction and Watts’s management) with the purpose of depicting a second foreign counry in a negative light to improve Qatar’s standing with the US government. Bennett was charged with “a scheme to falsify, conceal, and cover up material from the Department of Justice’s FARA Unit and false statements and material omissions in FARA filings.” Thanks to the agreement with DoJ, he will have that information dismissed with prejudice after amending his FARA filings and paying a $100,000 fine. Watts is alleged to have acted as an agent of a foreign principal without registering under FARA and making false statements to the FBI. He faces penaltie including payment of a $25,000 fine.
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| John Ruane |
Ruane Communications, an Alpharetta, GA-headquartered firm with an office in Chicago, rebrands as Ruane PR. With the rebrand, the agency is now focused on four areas of expertise: media relations, social media, content marketing and strategic counsel, working with clients in the healthcare, technology, consumer products and sports marketing sectors. Agency founder John Ruane spent 10 years writing for the Chicago Sun-Times before moving into public relations, with stints at Edelman and Pfizer. “Social media marketing is now a communications area that requires a level of technology expertise to understand the creative component and strategic direction as well as post-campaign performance in order to measure the success of each individual channel's strategy,” said Ruane.
PSC (Princeton Strategic Communications) acquires Nonprofit Partners... CG Life launches 24/364, a cultural brand platform intended to drive awareness, connection and action aimed at keeping rare disease at the forefront of the health and social conversation... Interluxe Group, which focuses on brand experiences and in-person activations; Quinn, a strategic communications agency; and media and digital agency North & Warren are uniting under the Interluxe Group banner.
KITH, which provides corporate reputation and crisis preparation services, is now owned by CEO Stephanie Craig, who has been with the firm since 2021... The Marketing Cloud, a part of Stagwell, introduces several expansions to Agent Cloud, the platform it launched in October 2025 to simplify access to its AI tools and marketing assistants.... Notified launches its AI Press Release Optimizer.
V2 Communications launches its AI Visibility Solution and Earned Media at Scale, two service offerings designed to help companies increase visibility and credibility in generative search... The Public Relations Global Network brings on Greenough Communications as its Boston member agency... DBC is relaunching The DBC Industry Calendar as a free site to help communicators more easily discover relevant events and awards in the cluttered event landscape driven by the growth of webinars and online events. 
PAN releases new original research showing that a significant share of B2B citations surfaced by ChatGPT are inaccurate, misattributed or entirely fabricated, introducing a new credibility risk for brands... REQ, which has offices in DC and San Diego, opens in Phoenix... Notified introduces Market Intelligence, an addition to its all-in-one IR Hub, which gives IR teams a more streamlined way to prepare for earnings calls.
FGS Global is collaborating with The 350 Club, a closed community for board members and leaders of large global companies... Impact XM, a portfolio company of global investment firm The Riverside Company, acquires Jack Morton from Omnicom... Southwest Strategies Group, a San Diego-based firm with offices in Fresno, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and Seattle, rebrands as Bodewell Group, unifying its family of agencies into a single strategic communications firm.
