Canadian organic foods supplier SunOpta Inc said it would buy organic frozen fruit supplier Sunrise Holdings Delaware Inc for about US$450 million in a move to strengthen its packaged products business, Reuters reported. SunOpta is buying the company from a group of investors led by U.S. private equity firm Paine & Partners.
Yann Robard, managing director and head of secondaries and co-investments at the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), is stepping down, becoming the third secondaries veteran to leave a top post this year. He will be replaced by eight-year veteran Michael Woolhouse, who has been senior principal of funds, secondaries and co-investments at CPPIB.
Stern Partners, a private equity firm with investment experience in the retail industry, plans to acquire a Canadian clothing chain that has fallen on hard times. Comark, the parent of fashion brands Ricki's, Bootlegger and Cleo, agreed to sell the business to a Stern Partners' affiliate. Founded in 1976, the company has been backed for more than a decade by U.S. private equity firm KarpReilly.
Antares Capital is lining up a US$13.9 billion financing package that backs General Electric Capital Corp's sale of the mid-market sponsor finance platform to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and raises funds for future growth, sources told Reuters. Credit Suisse is leading the credit facilities.
A Brazilian court approved a debtor-in-possession loan to engineering firm OAS SA, the company said, after it earlier this year filed for bankruptcy protection in the wake of a corruption investigation that shut its access to refinancing, Reuters reported. Brookfield Asset Management will extend the US$254 million loan to OAS, which will set aside a 24.4 percent stake it owns in infrastructure company Invepar as collateral.
Rogers Communications has put The Shopping Channel up for sale and received interest from foreign buyers for the television asset that may fetch over $300 million, sources told Reuters. Rogers, which started the process about six weeks ago, may attract bids from Liberty Interactive, U.S. home shopping channel operators, as well as private equity firms.
Fulcrum Capital Partners has surpassed the target set for the final close of Fulcrum Capital Partners V LP, raising the largest private equity partnership in the firm's history. The Vancouver-based Fulcrum announced today that Fund V secured a total of $344 million in committed capital from new and repeat limited partners. That’s about 15 percent more than its revised goal of $300 million.
Royal Bank of Canada and Bank of Montreal were the top two advisers on Canadian M&A deals in the first half of 2015, a period during which the overall dollar value of deals surged despite a decline in the actual number of transactions, Reuters reported. Thomson Reuters data showed US$122 billion in merger and acquisition transactions in Canada in the first half, up 35 percent from the year before and topped only by the record first half of 2007.
Brookfield Asset Management has approached Australia's Asciano Ltd with a US$6.8 billion takeover bid, but uncertainty about whether the deal would go through capped gains in the stock price of the rail freight firm, Reuters reported. If successful, the deal would be the seventh-largest inbound takeover of an Australian company. Brookfield's offer was made through Brookfield Infrastructure Partners.
Cenovus Energy Inc, Canada's second-largest independent oil producer, said on Tuesday it has agreed to sell its portfolio of oil and gas royalty properties to Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan for about $3.3 billion. As Reuters first reported this month, the decision to sell the unit, Heritage Royalty Ltd, to Teachers' Natural Resources Group was made after exploring several options including an initial public offering.