By Carol Anne Huff ( February 14, 2019, 2:08 PM EST) -- Although the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has taken steps through the JOBS Act and other legislation to remove roadblocks to capital formation generally, it has not taken a fresh look at special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, in over a decade. Operating companies that go public by merging with SPACs are saddled with unnecessary restrictions that prohibit them from accessing the capital markets efficiently. The reasons for this are largely historical and stem from their categorization as shell companies and the association of shell companies with penny stock fraud in the 1990s. Inefficient regulation of the SPAC market would not be a problem but for the fact SPACs accounted for approximately 20 percent of all 2018 initial public offerings by number and 17 percent of all IPO proceeds, and attracted over $10 billion in capital....