Over the past few years, we've seen a flood of special purpose acquisition company offerings (or SPACs). Basically, these are public companies that raise money to pursue acquisitions. It's a way to provide targets with some liquidity as well as a public vehicle (to do things like buy other companies).

Well, today Alternative Asset Management Acquisition Corporation (AMEX: AMV) – which is an SPAC – announced that it is merging with Halcyon, which is an alternative asset manager (founded in 1981). The deal comes to about $974 million (including $505 million in cash and notes).

Halcyon, which manages $11.5 billion in assets, operates a variety of hedge funds. In fact, some of its strategies focus on "stressed/distressed" debt categories, which has become a popular spot lately.

Then again, as seen with other publicly-traded alternative assets managers – like Blackstone (NYSE: BX) and Och-Ziff Capital Management (NYSE: OZM) – it's been challenging.

In today's trading, Alternative Asset Management's stock price is up about 2.15% to $9.50 (keep mind that the company went public at $10 per share).

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.