Michael Kelly Associates Meets Search Deadline for Pharma Company Going Public Through SPAC

Every executive search comes with a set of challenging requirements.

But the requirements for an executive search that Michael Kelly Associates performed last year for Procaps Group were as challenging as any the company has faced.

For one thing, the firm not only had to find a director of investor relations for Procaps, it had to do so before the maker of drugs, nutritional supplements and hospital supplies went public by merging with a special purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC. That gave Michael Kelly Associates 45 days to fill the position.

Additionally, even though the SPAC that was taking Procaps public was based in the U.S., Procaps is based in Colombia, so the candidates for the position had to be bilingual. They also had to have contacts among securities analysts who follow healthcare and/or pharmaceutical companies, so they could make investors aware of Procaps. And finally, because Procaps’ executive office is in the Miami suburb of Aventura, Fla., the candidates had to be willing to live in South Florida, which hasn’t traditionally been a pharmaceutical industry hotspot.

Despite all that, Michael Kelly said, his company was able to find Procaps five qualified candidates within 30 days of starting the search, and one of them, Melissa Angelini, was the person the company wound up hiring.

“It was an incredibly successful search with the time pressure,” Kelly said.

It was also the kind of search that firms such as Kelly’s have been asked to do more of the past two-plus years due to the popularity of SPACs.

Also known as blank-check companies, SPACs are publicly traded companies that use the money they raise from selling shares to acquire privately held companies. Typically, a SPAC announces it is going to do an acquisition in a specific industry, raises money, looks for acquisition candidates in the industry and turns the one it settles on into a publicly traded company by buying it.

In Procaps’ case, it was bought by a SPAC called Union Acquisition Corp. II in a $1.1 billion deal that was announced in March 2021 and completed six months later, turning Procaps into a publicly traded company whose shares are traded on the NASDAQ stock market under the symbol PROC.

SPACs have been in existence for many years, but their use exploded the past two years. In 2020, SPACs raised $83.4 billion through initial public offerings, nearly twice the total amount they raised in the preceding 10 years, according to research company Statista. They almost doubled that last year, raising $161.8 billion through IPOs, Statista said.

Kelly learned about Procaps when he paid a visit to WM Partners, a private equity firm specializing in middle market health and wellness companies based in Aventura. WM’s co-founder, Jose Minski, is a member of Procaps’ board of directors and the brother of Procaps CEO Ruben Minski, and told Kelly that Procaps might be able to use his services.

Kelly held a Zoom call with Ruben Minski. Since Kelly is a triathlete, he is familiar with nutritional supplements, which are among the things Procaps makes. That resulted in Kelly getting into a fairly lengthy conversation with Ruben Minski, which ended with Ruben Minski saying he’d let Kelly know if Procaps was going to use Michael Kelly Associates.

“He called me back a few weeks later and said, ‘We need somebody in 45 days. We’re going to merge into a SPAC,’” Kelly said.

The SPAC subsequently got delayed, but Kelly’s firm more than met the deadline.

“Procaps had the candidate they hired within 30 days of opening the search, which I think is pretty remarkable,” he said.

Photo Credit: Michele Blackwell on Unsplash