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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 6:11 PM EST
CPPIB takes a big stake in Progress
Boyd Erman
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board's new relationship investing team is off and running with a $350-million investment in Progress Energy that will enable the natural-gas company to buy new assets and spend money drilling.
Progress is paying $390-million for a package of gas assets in northeast British Columbia that Suncor Energy is selling, and will spend another $350-million developing assets this year.
It's possible because of the cash from CPPIB, and also the money raised in a concurrent $250-million public offering.
The CPPIB team, led by Scott Lawrence, crossed the country last year looking for investment candidates, and made an impression on Progress. Management from the gas producer approached CPPIB about backing the purchase of assets from Suncor late last year, and CPPIB came on board to take a stake that will give it almost 15 per cent of Progress.
Progress is an example of what Mr. Lawrence called a "simple recipe that's hard to find."
Link to this postTuesday, February 9, 2010 3:11 PM EST
BMO lures back deal-maker
Andrew Willis
Clients of the M&A group at BMO Nesbitt Burns now have a whole lot of real-world wisdom to call on, as former Celestica executive Rahul Suri re-joins the takeover team.
Mr. Suri is a 20-year veteran of deal-making, with experience that just can’t be replicated courtesy of his recent stint as at Celestica, where he was senior vice-president of corporate development responsible for global mergers and acquisitions, then head of the enterprise division. He returned Monday to BMO Nesbitt Burns as a managing director, with responsibility for tech companies, financial sponsors, diversified industries and corporate clients in India..
Prior to joining Celestica, Mr. Suri was an M&A advisor at the investment dealer arm of Bank of Montreal BMO-T for several years, and he started his career as a lawyer and partner in Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg. In his spare time, Mr. Suri has been a policy advisor to the Ontario Securities Commission.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 3:01 PM EST
Bombardier locks in $1-billion
Andrew WIllis
The prevailing wisdom among investment bankers is that capital markets will be less receptive to financings in the future than they are right now.
Fears that rates will rise and investors will grow increasingly leery of lending now dominate credit markets, and in response, companies are rolling out bond sales.
The biggest issue in the market right now comes from Bombardier, which is selling $1-billion (U.S.) of debt as part of a larger refinancing push.
Bombardier is marketing eight-year and 10-year bonds in a financing led by JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank and UBS Securities. The company is a notch below investment grade, with these bonds expected to draw a double-B rating. Part of this bond issue will be used to retire up to $550-million of the company’s outstanding U.S. dollar and euro-denominated debt, according to a report late Monday from TD Waterhouse.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 6:04 PM EST
Intrawest asset sales continue
Boyd Erman
It's looking more and more likely that Intrawest ULC will avoid an embarrassing foreclosure auction right in the middle of the Olympics, which take place in large part at the company's flagship Whistler resort.
The company's garage sale of assets to raise money to pay down debt and avoid a foreclosure by its lenders continues, with golf resort Sandestin the latest to go. The buyer is the Becnel family of Florida.
The threat of foreclosure from the banks was widely viewed as a pressure tactic from the lenders after they grew impatient with what they viewed as the unwillingness of Intrawest and its owner, Fortress Investment Group to face the tough decisions that had to be made. And it's working.
The sale comes about a week after Intrawest found a buyer for the village at the Squaw Valley ski hill in California, and about two weeks after the company sold its Panorama ski resort in British Columbia. There are no terms disclosed for the sales, but the tally has to be getting up there.
Intrawest has been saddled with a big debt ever since it was taken over by Fortress Investment Group at the height of the real estate boom. Fortress used borrowing to pay for the takeover, and pledge most of the real estate in Intrawest as security.
Intrawest spokesman Ian Galbraith said the sales have been in the works for a long time and relate to the company's long-term strategy of focusing on a core set of four-season destination resorts, such as Whistler-Blackcomb in British Columbia and Mont Tremblant in Quebec.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 12:54 PM EST
Wellington West lands trader
Andrew Willis
Wellington West Capital Markets added expertise to its equity desk on Tuesday by landing arbitrage specialist Shay D'Souza.
Mr. D’Souza is a veteran of CI Capital markets, the temporary name for the institutional arm of Blackmont Capital, which was bought last week by a number of its employees. Mr. D'Souza works with clients on risk arbitrage trading strategies - that includes playing takeovers - and warrant arbitrage. He joins an equity desk in Toronto that is home to five traders and a four-person electronic trading team.
Wellington West Capital Markets is the institutional arm of employee-owned, Winnipeg-based Wellington West Holdings Inc. The independent dealer has 500 employees and 400 offices across Canada. National Bank has a minority stake in the company.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010 6:56 PM EST
Legal talent on the move
Jeff Gray
You could call it Lateral Move Monday in the legal profession.
What started as a trickle of lawyer departures from major Canadian firms at the beginning of the year has become a steady stream.
On Monday alone, at least four lawyers jumped from one major law firm to another.
Monday, February 8, 2010 12:59 PM EST
Dundee deepens sales desk
Andrew Willis
There’s a new head of sales on the equity desk at Dundee Capital Markets, as Kristina (Tina) Bates joins the investment bank from Paradigm Capital.
After a decade in sales and research at employee-owned Paradigm, Ms. Bates moved to Dundee on Monday as an executive vice-president. She was an analyst on software and tech services companies before moving to the desk, and worked as a consultant in the U.K. for Capgemini before working on the Street. Ms. Bates also has an accounting degree, earned while at Ernst & Young.
Monday, February 8, 2010 11:39 AM EST
The Olympics could be golden for TSX
Tara Perkins
That warm and fuzzy feeling that the Olympics inspire just might be a good thing for Canadian investors in coming weeks.
Noting that behavioural investing experts say that stocks sometimes earn higher returns just because the sun is shining, HSBC senior equity specialist Douglas Rowat decided to see what impact the Olympics have on the market’s mood. He looked at all of the Olympic games - summer and winter - going back to 1988 and, sure enough, found that during the two-week period of the games themselves the market of the host country traded higher 58 per cent of the time and had an overall average return of 0.9 per cent.
Monday, February 8, 2010 7:46 AM EST
Global investment banks rebound with higher revenue
Brokerages are rebounding from the deep financial crisis, a new report says. Investment banking fee revenue around the world recovered 12 per cent, hitting $66.3-billion (U.S.) last year, the report Monday by International Financial Services London said, but that was down by more than a fifth from the record fees of 2007.
Thursday, February 4, 2010 5:01 PM EST
What Genuity is worth to Canaccord
Andrew Willis
If Canaccord Capital does take over Genuity Capital Markets, a deal that’s by no means done, the founders of the employee-owned firm will have turned in one of the Street’s more impressive wealth-creation exercises.
Vancouver-based Canaccord CF-T is in exploratory takeover talks with Genuity, and while there are daunting cultural and leadership issues to overcome, there’s also a sense that the two dealers' specialties mesh. There’s also a sense that previous reporting on this deal seriously understated Genuity’s value: Sources say the investment bank is likely worth $340-million to $400-million, in a takeover or an initial public offering, far more than projected.
Streetwise Contributors
Andrew Willis
Andrew Willis joined The Globe and Mail in September of 1995. His career has included stints at a number of publications, including The Financial Post, The Financial Times of Canada, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, and MacLean's magazine. He also did freelance writing for Investment Executive magazine. He appears on television for BNN TV and CBC Newsworld.
Andrew has co-written a book, The Bre-X Fraud, with business journalist Douglas Goold.
Read Streetwise Tuesday through Friday in the pages of Report on Business.
Boyd Erman
Boyd Erman is a long-time business journalist who has worked at Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and the National Post before joining the Globe and Mail. Over the years, his areas of coverage have included economics, monetary policy, debt markets and corporate finance.
In addition, he is a regular commentator and guest host on Business News Network.
Steve Ladurantaye
Steve Ladurantaye wrote about technology companies in Ottawa before reporting for the Peterborough Examiner and Kingston Whig-Standard, where he won a National Newspaper Award for explanatory journalism. After joining the Globe and Mail in 2007, his work has regularly appeared in Report On Business and Globe Investor Magazine.
Tara Perkins
Tara Perkins has been a business reporter since 2004, following a brief stint as overnight editor of globeandmail.com. She has been writing for the Globe's business section since the spring of 2007, covering the banking sector during the course of the financial crisis. Prior to that, she worked for the Toronto Star. Tara has a Bachelor of Journalism from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph.
Jeff Gray
Jeff Gray joined The Globe in 1998. After stints as a reporter in sports and as a copy editor in news, he helped relaunch globeandmail.com as a breaking news website in 2000. He moved to The Globe's Toronto city hall bureau in 2004, writing a weekly column about traffic and public transit. He has also worked for the world desk of the BBC's news website in London and for CBC News. He covers legal affairs for The Report on Business.
Jacquie McNish
Jacquie McNish has been a business writer with The Globe and Mail since 1988. Prior to that she was a reporter with The Wall Street Journal.
During her time at The Globe and Mail, she has served as the paper's New York correspondent and won three National Newspaper Awards. She is the author of The Big Score: Robert Friedland and The Voisey's Bay Hustle and Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, for which she and co-author Sinclair Stewart won the National Business Book Award. She is a co-host of Market Morning on the Business News Network.
