A Tesla rival is going public at a $5.4 billion valuation via a SPAC set up by Marvel Comics' ex-CEO

• A Tesla-like British startup is set to go public at a $5.4 billion valuation via a special-acquistion company formed by former Marvel Comics CEO Peter Cuneo.
• London-based Arrival will combine with US firm CIIG Merger. The combined company expects to list on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol "ARVL."
• Arrival competes with EV-maker Tesla and the creator of Amazon's first custom-electric delivery vehicle, Rivian.
• The startup's signed contracts currently amount to as much as $1.2 billion.

British electric-vehicle startup Arrival will go public by combining with a US "blank check company" set up by Peter Cuneo, the former CEO of Marvel Comics and personal care firm Remington Products.

The deal would value the combined company at $5.4 billion and is expected to raise a total of $660 million, Arrival said in a statement. The electric bus-and-van maker was last valued at $3 billion after receiving a $118 million investment from BlackRock.

Arrival is expected to list on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol "ARVL" and the deal is expected to close by early 2021. It competes with Elon Musk's Tesla and Michigan-based Rivian, which is fully backed by Amazon.

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It also counts Hyundai Motor Company, Kia Motors, and United Parcel Service among its investors. UPS has already committed to an order of 10,000 electric vans early this year, and may increase that at some point.

Arrival said its signed contracts amount to as much as $1.2 billion and its first vehicles are scheduled for production in the fourth-quarter of 2021.

US businessman Peter Cuneo will join Arrival's board as non-executive chairman, while founder Denis Sverdlov will remain as the CEO.

Special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, are also known as "blank check" companies. These are created specifically to take a company public, going past the traditional route of an initial public offering. Their use has exploded this year. About $66 billion has been raised across 186 SPAC IPOs in 2020 so far, according to SPACInsider.com, more than triple last year's $13.6 billion in proceeds through 59 deals.

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