Singapore Marketplace Carousell Drops SPAC Talks with L Catterton

The Singapore based horizontal marketplace company Carousell has reportedly ended talks with private equity firm L Catterton about going public via a SPAC merger.

Citing sources with knowledge of the matter, a report in the business publication Bloomberg claimed that Carousell had pulled out of a potential market debut via a merger with L Catterton Asia Acquisition Corp due to market volatility. Carousell and the U.S. listed SPAC had been in talks which could have seen Carousell listed in the States at a $1.5 billion valuation.

Neither Carousell nor L Catterton gave Bloomberg any comment on the matter. Special purpose acquisition companies are seeing significant headwinds after being all the rage a year ago. The last major SPAC deal in the sector was PropertyGuru's merger with Peter Thiel backed Bridgetown 2 Holdings back in March.

Carousell operates a leading marketplace business in its native Singapore as well as Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Philippines where it bought out OLX in 2019.

The company has reportedly been eyeing up a deal for former REA Group real estate portal asset and Indonesian market leader 99 Group. The deal would present a serious rival in the region to the newly-public portal operator PropertyGuru.