The Private Equity team at Cassels has extensive experience, industry knowledge and relationships to strategically advise clients on all elements of private equity transactions. Our fully integrated and multi-disciplinary team of M&A, tax, restructuring, competition/foreign investment regulation, debt financing, franchise, intellectual property and other specialty practice lawyers deliver effective and efficient execution. We have wide-ranging experience advising on domestic and cross-border buy-outs, investments, co-investments, fund formation, debt restructuring and secondary transactions. Our clients include international and domestic private equity funds, company management, family offices, search funds, independent sponsors, portfolio companies, and alternative asset funds. As a mid-market private equity leader, our Private Equity lawyers consistently provide high quality deliverables along with world class service.
Private equity is a fast-paced and dynamic sector and our practice continues to expand to meet our clients’ needs. Our entrepreneurial lawyers represent clients throughout the private equity industry on a range of transactions – from fund formation and fund raising, through acquisitions and recapitalizations to dispositions and exits.
Specific mandates that our Private Equity team has been involved with include:
- Acting for a European-based private equity fund on the Canadian aspects of its world-wide acquisition of a consumer goods company
- Representing one of the largest growers, packers and marketers of greenhouse vegetables in North America, in their partnership with one of the Canada’s leading private equity firms
- Acting for one of Canada’s premier private equity investors, as part of a group, that acquired the largest manufacturer of impact extruded aluminium containers in the world
- Acting for a global private equity investment fund on the acquisition of limited partnership interests in various private equity funds from a Canadian financial institution
- Acting on behalf of both the senior and subordinated lenders in a significant financing of an acquisition by a US-based private equity fund of a manufacturing business based in Atlantic Canada
- Representing various sponsor groups on the fund formation and launch of various funds, including several significant real estate funds.
- Acting for a US-based private equity fund in the acquisition, implementation of its growth strategy and ultimate disposition of a Canadian farm group
- Representing a US-based private equity fund on the Canadian aspects of its world-wide acquisition of a chemical company
- Acting for a portfolio company of a Canadian mid-market private equity fund on its recent acquisition in furtherance of its growth strategy
- Acting for a worldwide private equity firm with over $8 billion under management in the acquisition of several portfolio companies
- Representing management in its partnership with a North American based private equity fund
- Representing private equity lenders in connection with a unitranche term loan to finance an acquisition
Independent Sponsors
The independent sponsor is an important part of the private capital ecosystem in Canada. Without the constraints of traditional private equity, there is flexibility in both the types of deals that independent sponsors can take part in and the way they can structure those deals. This allows independent sponsors to search for – and close on – deals that may elude conventional private equity.
Independent sponsors often bring with them industry or operations expertise but require counsel that can address the legal needs of non-traditional private equity transactions. Cassels understands the dynamic nature of the independent sponsor and both the opportunities and challenges that this cohort confronts, which are different than funded private equity sponsors. Recognizing the needs that this asset class requires to be met to be successful on a deal-to-deal basis, we provide flexible, adaptable, and practical solutions to independent or fundless sponsors across Canada.
Search Funds
From raising capital and searching for and acquiring a company to operation and value creation to exiting the transaction – each step along the M&A transaction life cycle presents unique challenges for search funds and their intrepid searchers. We understand that search funds require legal counsel who appreciate these challenges and who transcend their role from legal advisors to business partners. Cassels offers experience and expertise throughout the transaction continuum and can serve as your trusted partner and advisor for the entire life cycle of a transaction.