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Hennessy Capital (Daniel Hennessy)

#3 of 117
59/100Mixed recordhigh confidence

59/100 from 15 resolved vehicles (13 closed, 2 failed), 75% of the raw 62 after small-sample shrink, completion credit gated ×0.94 by the measured post-close record. Confidence: high.

Vehicles
18
9 in the live DB · 9 SEC-verified priors · computed by SpacBrain from cited rows, as of 2026-09-10
Resolved
15
13 closed · 1 liquidated · 1 terminated
Best priced exit
+548.1%
BLBD vs the $10.00 baseline
Worst priced exit
-100.0%
Appreciate Holdings, Inc. vs the $10.00 baseline

Sponsor DNA

what has happened before, with its sample size
  • Completion rate87%n=15 resolved vehiclesderived

    Of the 15 vehicles this sponsor has taken to a final outcome, 13 closed a business combination.

  • Liquidation rate7%n=15 resolved vehiclesderived

    1 of those 15 returned the trust to holders and wound up without a deal.

  • Median post-close return-17.0%n=7 priced completed deSPACsderived

    A holder who stayed through one of this sponsor's completed deals has ended up a median -17.0% against the $10.00 trust baseline they could have taken in cash, across the 7 vehicles we can price. Measured at the last close we hold, not at a fixed anniversary.

  • Median redemption—n=0 redemption events with a stated ratederived

    No redemption event with a stated rate on record — absent, which is not the same as zero. Extraction covers part of the universe, so a low count is our coverage as much as the sponsor’s history.

  • Deals terminated1terminated dealcounted

    1 announced combination has been terminated on this sponsor's record — 0 on a live vehicle, 1 on a vehicle that then wound up.

  • Extension votes on record2extension votescounted

    2 extension votes — occasions this sponsor needed more time and asked holders for it.

5 of 6 statistics carry a figure for this sponsor. A rate is published from 3 resolved vehicles and a median from 3 observations: two points have no middle, and a rate over two can only be 0, 50 or 100. Counts have no threshold — a count is an observation, not an estimate.

Everything marked derived is arithmetic we did to rows we hold, not a figure any filing states.

What this panel will not tell you, and why (6)›
  • Median day-one move on announcement

    PriceBar holds 2026-05-11 → 2026-08-17 only. Of 83 dated announcements across the whole universe, 16 fall on a day we hold a bar for a scored sponsor’s vehicle, spread over 14 sponsors — one sponsor reaches three observations. A bar that does not exist is not a 0% move.

  • Pre-vote move

    Only 12 deals carry a vote date at all, and exactly 1 of them falls inside the PriceBar window. One observation is an anecdote with a decimal point.

  • Median time from IPO to announcement

    42 IPO→announcement pairs exist, but only six sponsors have two and one has three. Enough for a statistic about the asset class; not for one about a sponsor, which is what this panel claims to be.

  • Median time from signing to close

    Exactly 1 deal in the entire database is CLOSED and carries an announcement date. There is no 2nd observation anywhere to take a median over.

  • 12-month post-deSPAC return

    `SponsorPriorVehicle.postCloseReturnPct` is measured at the LAST close we hold, whenever that is — not on a 12-month anniversary. We hold no price history for the resulting companies, so the anniversary price does not exist. The median post-close return above is the honest version of this number and says what it is measured against.

  • Sponsor capital at risk

    Nothing stores it. The only sponsor-economics column we hold is `Deal.promotePct` (founder shares as a percentage of post-IPO shares, on 34 deals under a scored sponsor), and that measures the equity the sponsor got nearly free — the opposite of the dollars it put in. Deriving at-risk capital from a promote percentage would be an invention with a citation stapled to it.

Score breakdown

every component, what it measured, and what it could not
  • Deal completion20% weightn=1582/100

    13/15 resolved vehicles closed a deal (87%); 1 liquidated, 1 terminated. Gated ×0.94 by measured post-close quality (44/100): closing deals that ended below trust value is not a completed job, so only 94% of the completion credit is earned. Full credit resumes at outcome quality 50/100 (the median deSPAC ending at trust value); the gate can never exceed 1×.

  • Liquidation / termination drag16% weightn=1888/100

    1 liquidation and 1 termination across 18 vehicles raised → 13% attrition (terminations 1.25×, stale shells 0.75×).

  • Post-close outcome quality40% weightn=744/100

    6 priced deSPACs vs trust value (prior vehicles against the $10.00 IPO baseline, in-DB vehicles against the trust they filed): median +3%, 4/6 still worth at least half of trust, 1 at under a tenth of it. Worst: Appreciate Holdings, Inc. -100%. Best: BLBD +548%. 1 more delisted with no surviving quote — scored as a total loss (a known outcome, not a gap), with no % invented. 6 other completion(s) not priced (6 no stored price) — left OUT of the ratio, not guessed.

  • Redemption behaviour10% weightnot measurable

    3 redemption event(s) on file but none state a rate — not measurable, held neutral.

    Held at the neutral 50 across its full 10% weight — missing data is never scored as a failure, but it never earns credit either.

  • Extension reliance8% weightn=293/100

    2 extension votes across 9 in-DB vehicles (0.2 per vehicle; 3+ scores zero).

  • Live fleet vs trust6% weightn=333/100

    1/3 live vehicles trading at or above the trust value they filed.

  • Measured weak recordflat penaltyn=7100/100

    Median post-close return -17% across 7 measured prior vehicles — above the -80% weak-record threshold.

How the number is built: weighted mean of the six components above = 62, then pulled 25% of the way back to the neutral 50 for small sample size (15 resolved vehicles) = 59.

1 component is not measurable for this sponsor (redemption behaviour) — 10% of the weight is a neutral placeholder rather than evidence. That is why the confidence chip reads high.

How the Sponsor Score worksoutcome-first weighting

The score answers one question: did this sponsor make money for the people who held through the merger? Not “did they get a deal signed”. Those are different questions, and most sponsor rankings quietly answer the second one.

So post-close outcome quality carries 40% — the realised return of every prior vehicle we can price from a primary filing, measured against the $10.00 trust baseline. Deal completion carries 20%, and it is gated: closing deals that ended below trust value only earns part of the completion credit, because closing is a precondition for a return, not a return. Liquidation and termination drag takes 16%, redemption behaviour 10%, extension reliance 8%, and what the tape says about the live fleet just 6% — a quote is an opinion, not evidence.

A component with no data is never guessed. It is held at the neutral 50 across its full weight and labelled “not measurable”. Dropping it and re-weighting the rest would quietly reward a sponsor for having no verifiable record — exactly backwards. The consequence: a sponsor with no post-close evidence at all cannot read above 71, and cannot be labelled a strong operator no matter how many deals it closed.

Experience never inflates the score. There is no “years in business” component. A first-time sponsor sits at exactly 50 and reads “unproven” with low confidence — new is not bad. Sample size only pulls a score toward or away from that neutral 50, so nobody is called great or terrible on one vehicle.

Every input is a row already in the database, sourced from SEC primary filings: prior vehicles verified on EDGAR, redemption results read out of 8-Ks, prices from public feeds. The arithmetic is deterministic — no model, no LLM, no judgement call. Research tooling, not investment advice.

Prior vehicles

9 SEC-verified — what happened to holders who stayed in
VehicleOutcomeBecamevs $10.00TodaySource
Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp IIPO 2013CompletedBlue BirdBLBD+548.1%Trading$64.81 · Aug 14, 20260001193125-15-015053 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp IIIPO 2015CompletedDaseke-17.0%Acquired$8.30 · Apr 1, 20240001213900-24-014633 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp IIIIPO 2017CompletedNRC Group+23.0%Acquired$12.30 · Nov 1, 20190001047469-19-005334 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp IVIPO 2019CompletedCanoolisting endedDelisted0001628280-25-002459 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
PropTech Acquisition CorpIPO 2019CompletedPorch Group, Inc.PRCH+73.8%Trading$17.38 · Aug 14, 20260001213900-20-045506 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
PROPTECH INVESTMENT CORP. IIIPO 2020CompletedAppreciate Holdings, Inc.-100.0%Delisted$0.00 · Aug 14, 20260001213900-22-077649 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Hennessy Capital Investment Corp VI (→ Red Rock)IPO 2021CompletedNamib MineralsNAMM-86.6%Trading$1.34 · Aug 14, 20260001213900-25-034393 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Hennessy Capital Investment Corp VIPO 2020Liquidated———0001213900-23-000041 opens on sec.gov in a new tab
Global Technology Acquisition Corp. IIPO 2021Terminated———0001493152-24-015476 opens on sec.gov in a new tab

6 of 9 prior vehicles carry an honest post-close price, split-adjusted against the $10.00 trust baseline a holder gave up at the merger. Cash buyouts are read from the per-share consideration stated in the DEFM14A / SC 14D-9; a buyout no filing prices stays unpriced and stays out of the score. “Listing ended” means the quote stopped with no buyer — scored as a total loss because that is what the evidence says, but never printed as a percentage we cannot source.

Current fleet

the vehicles running today

Research profile

synthesized from SEC filings + sourced research

Hennessy Capital — Daniel Hennessy's franchise. Prior-vehicle track record (SEC-verified via formerNames): (1) Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp I COMPLETED → Blue Bird (BLBD, Nasdaq, still listed). (2) HCAC II COMPLETED → Daseke (2017; acquired 2024). (3) HCAC III COMPLETED → NRC Group (2018; merged into US Ecology). (4) HCAC IV COMPLETED → Canoo (2020; bankrupt, 25-NSE 2025-06). (5) Hennessy Capital Investment Corp VI (renamed Red Rock Acquisition Corp) COMPLETED → Namib Minerals (NAMM, Nasdaq, 2025; DEFM14A 2025-04). LIQUIDATED: HCIC V (25-NSE 2022-12). Net: 5 completed deSPACs, 1 liquidation. Mixed post-close (Blue Bird strong; Canoo bankrupt; Daseke/NRC acquired). Sources: SEC EDGAR submissions API (formerNames) + full-text search, efts.sec.gov.

— research profile — Daniel J. Hennessy is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Hennessy Capital Group, an alternative investment firm he established in 2013 after the wind-down of Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC (CHS Capital), the Chicago private equity firm he co-founded in 1988 and grew into one of the 100 largest PE firms in the United States. A University of Michigan Ross MBA ('81) who began his career in energy lending at Continental Illinois National Bank and later ran Citicorp's Midwest mezzanine group, Hennessy pivoted to SPACs at age 55 and has since become one of the longest-tenured and most prolific independent SPAC sponsors in the market. He is the sole managing member of the sponsor entity and controls its management. The firm operates as a multi-generational, family-led investment platform: his son Thomas Hennessy serves as president, COO, and managing partner (a former portfolio manager at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with prior stints at Equity International and Credit Suisse), while Nicholas Geeza acts as EVP and CFO (a five-time SPAC CFO with backgrounds at US Bank Capital Markets and J.P. Morgan). Vice President Megan Cai rounds out the team with experience at Latch, Knotel, J.P. Morgan, and InVision. The firm is headquartered in Zephyr Cove, Nevada, with operational presence in Houston and Wilson, Wyoming.

Hennessy Capital's SPAC track record is extensive by any measure. Completed mergers include Blue Bird Corporation (BLBD), the school bus manufacturer that became a top-performing SPAC and a leader in low- and zero-emission powertrains; Daseke (DSKE), the trucking consolidator; NRC Group Holdings, which became US Ecology (ECOL); Canoo; Porch.com; and more recent combinations including Appreciate, Banzai, Captivision, Carbon Revolution, Innventure, LPA, and Namib Minerals, the latter described as the largest SPAC merger to date in Africa. The firm's website also references a combination with Plus Power, a utility-scale battery storage developer. Not every vehicle has reached a deal, however: Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. V, a $345 million IPO from January 2021, was liquidated in December 2022 without completing a business combination, returning capital to trust at $9.99 per share. The firm's current active vehicles include Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. VII (HVII), a $175 million vehicle priced in January 2025 targeting industrial technology and energy transition companies with enterprise values of $500 million or more, which has announced a pending merger with ONE Nuclear Energy LLC, and Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. VIII, a $210 million vehicle priced in February 2026 with a similar mandate.

The sponsor's investment thesis has evolved steadily toward sustainable industrial technology,…

1 sentence withheld from the text above. It stated a vehicle count (16 to 17 SPACs) that does not reconcile with the record we counted: 18 vehicles — 9 in the live database and 9 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.

Data provenance & audit trail1 internal entry

Written by SpacBrain’s data agents whenever a figure is captured, corrected or flagged, and kept verbatim so every number on this page can be traced back to the filing that states it. This is a running log, not the current record: an early entry may be superseded by a later correction — the panels above always hold the current values.

Hennessy Capital (Daniel Hennessy) — sponsor record
NOTE-SEAL2026-08-15

Raw SEC identifiers lifted out of the public prose above (the sentences are unchanged); verbatim, each shown with the words it followed: "…es): (1) Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp I (CIK 0001589526)" · "…rd (BLBD, Nasdaq, still listed). (2) HCAC II (CIK 0001642453)" · "…→ Daseke (2017; acquired 2024). (3) HCAC III (CIK 0001703038)" · "… (2018; merged into US Ecology). (4) HCAC IV (CIK 0001750153)" · "…). (5) Hennessy Capital Investment Corp VI (CIK 0001842937" · "…2025; DEFM14A 2025-04). LIQUIDATED: HCIC V (CIK 0001829455"

The Sponsor Score is a deterministic research heuristic over primary-sourced rows — never a recommendation, and never a prediction. It cannot tell you whether this sponsor’s next deal will work; it tells you, precisely and with its own uncertainty attached, what the last ones did.