Kirk Falconer
US private equity firm Kohlberg & Co. has completed its previously-announced secondary sale of shares in Bauer Performance Sports Ltd., a Canadian manufacturer of hockey and lacrosse equipment and apparel. Gross proceeds from the sale totaled C$40 million, leaving Kohlberg with the equivalent of 31% of the company's issued and outstanding common shares. Kohlberg and Roustan Capital acquired Bauer in a corporate carve-out deal in 2008. In 2011, Bauer raised C$75 million in an initial public offering.
Canada is making a name for itself in private equity. With a stable economy facilitating steady deal-making in the home market and Canadian funds increasingly active abroad, the prognosis for 2013 is a positive one. That’s one of the findings of a new report, The Canadian Private Equity Market: 2012 in Review by law firm Torys LLP.
DRI Capital, a Canadian private equity firm specializing in monetizing royalties it purchases from pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and others, completed over C$600 million in deals in 2012. Among the firm's disclosed transactions was the September 2012 acquisition of BENLYSTA royalty rights from Weston, Mass.-based Biogen Idec Ltd. DRI Capital, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2013, raised its last partnership, Drug Royalty Fund II, totaling C$700 million, in 2010.
Match Marketing Group, a Toronto-based company which provides integrated shopping marketing solutions, bought Marketing Drive LLC, a shopper marketing agency in Norwalk, Connecticut, and its digital subsidiary Weld Media, from River North Group. The acquisition is Match Marketing's fifth in the last twelve months. Match Marketing is a portfolio company of Beringer Capital, a Canadian private equity firm focused on the marketing services and specialty media industry.
US private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners has acquired Vivonet, Inc., a Vancouver, British Columbia-based point of sale software and systems business for the restaurant industry. No financial terms were disclosed. Prior to Marlin Equity's acquisition, Vivonet was venture-backed. Among the company's Canadian investors since 2005 have been Discovery Capital Corp., Greenstone Venture Partners, Maxam Capital Corp. and Roynat Capital.
JLD Group, which is owned by Canadian private equity firm Champlain Financial Corp., has merged with Équipements Laguë to form Groupe JLD Laguë. The merger is effective March 1, 2013, with each store retaining its brand name and logo.
When you are an entrepreneur trying to build a product at a startup, you are in a pretty risky place. Usually you are not generating cash flow, you don’t yet know exactly which features are going to be required by the marketplace and you aren’t yet sure how you are going to market/sell the product […]
There’s a great line in the movie Wall Street when Gordon Gecko first meets Bud Fox. Gecko says to Fox: “This is the kid, calls me 59 days in a row, wants to be a player. There might be a picture of you in the dictionary under “persistence” kid. So tell me ‘Why should I be listening to YOU?’”
Fundless equity sponsors are the ultimate gamblers in the private equity universe. Sourcing and vetting deals without any committed capital, lining up financial sponsors on a deal-by-deal basis, and paying out of pocket for office space and due diligence, they roll the dice with each transaction. “We have to make it work. Fundless sponsors live […]