This may be the first SPAC to essentially merge with itself, but it will most assuredly not be the last.

Most people have been “analyzing” blank-check companies for about a year now, perhaps a little more. Not so Neil Danics. The man behind a company called “SPAC Analytics” has actually been digging into the things for 14 years, and even he’s taken aback by pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences’ plan to go public via blank-check merger. “In the years I’ve been analyzing SPACs, I’ve never seen a transaction like this,” he said.

Never seen, perhaps, but surely by this point expected, because what we have here is the inevitable culmination of the SPAC boom, which is to say, a SPAC merging with itself. And not in a bewilderingly complicated way, either, like when Dyal Capital Partners announced plans to spin off from Neuberger Berman by merging with a SPAC sponsored by a hedge fund it part owns, and then combine with another hedge fund it part owns. Roivant’s plans are, in their way, as disarmingly simply as marrying one’s daughter: The company, once combined with SPAC Montes Archimedes Acquisition Corp., plans to merge with another pharma called Immunovant on account of the apparently promising (as the premium that would be paid is reportedly upwards of 70%) “non-public” information it has on Immunovant, which information it has because it still owns the majority of Immunovant two years after having spun the company off in—you guessed it—a SPAC deal.

“I want Roivant to be seen as a next-gen pharma company,” [CEO Matthew] Gline said in an interview.

Well, Matt, given that this deal will give Roivant the same number of successfully-consumated SPAC deals as it has products successfully brought to market, we’d say you’re well on your way.

A SPAC Will Buy Back Its Own SPAC and Pay a Staggering Premium [Bloomberg]