Richard Branson's Virgin Group to Raise $400 Million for a SPAC

Richard Branson's Virgin Group is hopping aboard the blank-check company craze, looking to raise $400 million with plans to target a consumer-facing business operating in the United States or Western Europe. Virgin said on Wednesday that it has registered VG Acquisition as a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), a publicly traded shell company that is typically merged with a private company to take that company public. VG Acquisition is planning an initial public offering of 40,000,000 units at a price of $10 each, applying to list the units on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker VGAC.