Dan Och Bets on SPAC That’s Hunting for China Consumer Deals

(Bloomberg) -- Dan Och has invested in a blank-check company that’s targeting China’s consumer industry in the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. billionaire and his family office, Willoughby Capital, own 5.6% of Primavera Capital Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company focusing on global consumer companies with significant presence or potential in China, according to a regulatory filing Monday. The firm raised more than $350 million last month in an initial public offering in New York.

Och, 60, built a fortune through Och-Ziff Capital Management Group, which went public in 2007 and was once the largest publicly traded hedge fund firm in the U.S. It suffered an exodus of client cash and a slide in its share price after disclosing a regulatory probe in 2014. Och said he was pulling most of his capital from his namesake company in 2018, which was later rebranded as Sculptor Capital Management.

A representative for Och declined to comment, while Primavera Capital Acquisition didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Och teamed up with Glenn Fuhrman last year to create a blank-check company Ajax I, joining a list of hedge fund managers, venture capitalists, former bankers and sports stars raising money for potential investments. A record 248 SPACs debuted on U.S. exchanges in 2020, raising nearly $83 billion to provide a way for businesses to go public without going through the traditional route of an IPO.

‘Market Disclocation’

Primavera Capital Acquisition was set up by senior executives from Primavera Capital Group, a Beijing-based investment firm that has bought stakes in companies including e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Yum China Holdings Inc., which operates KFC and Pizza Hut chains. The company’s founder, Fred Hu, previously worked at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and played a key role in the investment bank’s purchase of a stake in Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd.

“The economic and market dislocation resulting from the Covid-19 global pandemic has significantly broadened our opportunity set by putting additional pressure on many consumer businesses, which were already facing challenges prior to the pandemic,” Primavera Capital Acquisition said in its prospectus.

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