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Who is behind CCIR? Cohen Circle (Betsy Cohen)

The people who set Cohen Circle Acquisition Corp. I up, what they have done before, and what happened to the shareholders who backed their earlier vehicles — every outcome cited to an SEC filing.

54/100Mixed recordhigh confidence

Extension reliance: 1 extension vote across 19 in-DB vehicles (0.1 per vehicle; 3+ scores zero).

Mixed record · high confidence — the same inputs always produce the same score.

Track record

The fleet this sponsor runs today, and the SEC-verified fate of every prior vehicle we have traced.

Cohen Circle (Betsy Cohen)
31 vehicles · 12 prior · 12 completed · 1 in deal · 4 searching · 13 liquidated · 1 terminated · 6 deSPACs not comparable to NAV (6 no price)
Prior vehicles (SEC-verified — 12)

Cohen Circle — Betsy & Daniel Cohen's franchise (FinTech Acquisition + FTAC series), among the most prolific SPAC sponsors ever. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified via formerNames): COMPLETED — FinTech Acquisition Corp I → CardConnect (2016); FinTech II → Intermex/Int'l Money Express (IMXI); FinTech III → Paya Holdings (2020; acquired by Nuvei 2023); FinTech IV → Perella Weinberg Partners (PWP, still listed); FTAC Olympus → Payoneer (PAYO, 2021, still listed); FTAC Emerald → Fold Holdings (FLD, 2025). LIQUIDATED (25-NSE + 15-12G, mostly 2022-23): FinTech V, FinTech VI, FTAC Athena, FTAC Hera, FTAC Parnassus, FTAC Zeus. Net: 6 completed deSPACs, 6 liquidations. Strong completer in open markets (Payoneer/PWP/IMXI listed), but a wave of liquidations when the SPAC market closed. Mixed. Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov. — research profile — Cohen Circle is a Philadelphia-based investment firm founded by Betsy Z. Cohen and her son Daniel Cohen, focused on fintech, technology, and impact investing. Betsy Cohen, now 84, is a lawyer, banker, and serial entrepreneur who founded three banks over her career, most notably The Bancorp (NASDAQ: TBBK), where she served as CEO for 15 years until retiring in 2014 and which hosted roughly 1,600 non-bank fintech companies on its platform. Before that, she founded Jefferson Bank in 1974 at age 32, becoming the first female bank CEO in Pennsylvania, and eventually sold it to Hudson United Bank in 1999. She also co-founded a Philadelphia law firm, clerked for the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and taught banking and antitrust law at Rutgers Law School. Daniel Cohen, her son and co-founder of both Cohen Circle and The Bancorp, brings over 20 years of operating and investing experience. Amanda Abrams serves as Chief Executive Officer of Cohen Circle LLC. The firm, formerly known as FinTech Masala, has raised over $5 billion in capital since 2015 and has made venture investments in companies including Ocrolus, Maxwell, Curve, H2O.AI, Greenwood, and BillGO. Her first SPAC, FinTech Acquisition Corp., was sponsored in January 2015 and completed a merger with CardConnect Corp. (NASDAQ: CCN) in July 2016. FinTech Acquisition Corp. II merged with Intermex Holdings II (NASDAQ: IMXI) in July 2018. FinTech Acquisition Corp. III merged with Paya (NASDAQ: PAYA) in August 2020. FTAC Olympus Acquisition Corp. (NASDAQ: FTOC) announced a merger with Payoneer in February 2021 at an implied enterprise value of approximately $3.3 billion. FinTech Acquisition Corp. IV merged with Perella Weinberg Partners (NASDAQ: PWP) at an implied equity value of roughly $975 million. FinTech Acquisition Corp. V announced a merger with eToro in March 2021 at an initial valuation of about $10.4 billion, later devalued to $8.8 billion in December 2021, and ultimately mutually terminated due to market conditions. Additional vehicles included FTAC Athena Acquisition Corp., FTAC Hera Acquisition Corp., and FTAC Parnassus Acquisition Corp., all brought to market in early 2021. The firm's most recent activity centers on two new Cohen Circle-branded vehicles. Cohen Circle Acquisition Corp. I (CCIR) announced a business combination agreement with JSC Kyivstar, Ukraine's largest communications operator with over 23 million mobile subscribers, in March 2025, with the…

1 sentence withheld from the text above. It stated a vehicle count (as many as nine to eleven SPAC vehicles) that does not reconcile with the record we counted: 31 vehicles — 19 in the live database and 12 SEC-verified prior vehicles. Neither side has been corrected here, and the stored research is unchanged; a count we cannot reconcile is not a count we will publish.

Full sponsor record →

The full Cohen Circle (Betsy Cohen) profile

Why the sponsor matters

The thirty-second version, for anyone who has never traded a SPAC.

A SPAC is an empty listed company; the sponsor is the only substance it has before a deal. They pick the target, negotiate the terms, and typically hold founder shares — equity they received nearly free — which pay off for them even in deals that lose public holders money. A sponsor’s prior vehicles are the closest thing to evidence about how this one ends.

How the founder-share incentive works is covered in our plain-English guide to the sponsor promote.

In plain English

Cash in trust / trust per sharethe cash the company is holding for each public share

Filed quarterly in the 10-Q's XBRL. It earns interest between filings, so the figure on a given day is slightly higher than the last filed one — where we show that we label it an estimate.

Dilutionhow much of the company new shares take from you

Sponsor promote, PIPE shares, warrants and rights all issue stock that did not pay $10 for it. The headline deal value is before that; the effective value is after.

De-SPACthe day the SPAC becomes the real company

The shares stop being a claim on a pot of cash and start being equity in an operating business. Roughly 80% of recent de-SPACs traded below $10 within a year.