This week's deals include Fasken advising co-investors in joint acquisition of IT provider
McCarthy Tétrault advised Slate Asset Management in its acquisition of Montreal-based investment manager Presima Inc., with Stikeman Elliott as legal advisor to Presima in the deal leading this week’s roundup. In the IT and cybersecurity sector, Fasken advised Alfar Capital and Walter Capital Partners in their first joint venture of buying Groupe Access.
Slate Asset Management, a real estate-focused alternative platform, announced the acquisition of Presima, a Montreal-based investment manager with $1.4 billion in assets under management.
Stikeman Elliott acted as legal counsel to Presima and McCarthy Tétrault advised Slate.
“We have been extremely impressed with the team at Presima and the sophisticated global offerings, data infrastructure, and client base they have grown out of Montreal over the last twenty years,” said Blair Welch, Slate Founding Partner. “Our firms share many of the same cultural values and a similar strategic vision for the future, creating a strong sense of alignment and a solid foundation for growth. We look forward to welcoming the Presima team to Slate and working closely together to continue building a leading real estate solution for allocators.”
“Slate’s global reach, experienced leadership and access to resources will enable us to unlock new avenues of growth and maximize the talent and expertise of our team,” said Presima Interim CEO Marc-André Flageole. “We are very pleased to be joining the Slate platform and look forward to enhancing our institutional client offerings, to continue to offer customized real estate investment solutions, and to provide our funds to a broader range of clients leveraging Slate’s network and local distribution capability.”
Completion of the transaction is expected by the end of the second quarter of 2022.
The acquisition of independent Canadian-managed IT and cybersecurity service provider Groupe Access marks the first co-investment of Alfar Capital and Walter Capital Partners.
Upon closing of the transaction, Alfar Capital and Walter Capital will jointly hold a majority stake in Groupe Access.
Fasken Martineau Dumoulin served as legal advisor for the buyers and Desjardins Capital Markets provided financing.
"We're very excited about this joint investment with Walter Capital, with whom we share similar values and a common investment vision," said Fares Kabbani, Managing Partner at Alfar Capital. "We'll work hand in hand to leverage our complementary expertise for the benefit of Groupe Access and provide strategic support to their strong management team as they roll out an ambitious growth plan."
"Together with Alfar Capital, we're eager to work with Groupe Access' seasoned management team to help the company become Canada's top IT provider," said Éric Phaneuf, President and CEO at Walter Capital. "To make it happen, we intend to take advantage of the market trends creating a favourable climate for partnerships as well as mergers and acquisitions within a highly fragmented industry. At the same time, we'll drive organic growth in a company that has already built a solid foundation."
Thomson Reuters acquired ThoughtTrace, a Houston-based document intelligence and contract analytics software provider backed by American firm Altira Group.
Cooley advised Altira Group and Kastner Gravelle served as legal counsel to ThoughtTrace.
ThoughtTrace’s AI-based software platform was originally developed to interpret complex oil and gas contracts and evolved to process thousands of words and extract data from large volumes of contractual documents.
“I want to congratulate ThoughtTrace CEO Nick Vandivere and his talented team for elevating their innovative AI software into an extremely valuable multi-industry platform that provides indispensable business intelligence to users across the economy,” said Sean Ebert, partner at Altira and a member of the ThoughtTrace board of directors. “Our oil and gas limited partners played a key role in ThoughtTrace’s lifecycle, from due diligence support, rapid adoption of the company’s AI solutions, to providing unique customer input during product development cycles. In exchange, our oil and gas partners gained competitive advantage and tangible value capture from being ahead of broader market technology adoption as well as an above market return on capital deployed.”
“Altira continues to seek innovators with advantaged technologies and business models that are proven to provide a sustainable competitive advantage to companies in the energy and industrial sectors,” said Altira Principal J.P. Bauman. “Our model enables our portfolio companies to have unique customer access to our oil and gas operating partners, which de-risks and accelerates the entire technology company lifecycle.”
lvanhoé Cambridge and American private investment firm Bain Capital partnered with India-based real estate developer Lodha in a $1.3-billion project to develop a green digital infrastructure platform that includes around 30 million square feet of operating assets.
When the transaction is completed, each of the three partners will have a 33-percent stake in property ownership. Lodha will lead the development and management of the assets.
“With the rapid digitization of our economy and the progress of ‘Make in India’ combined with the China + 1 strategy of most global manufacturers, we see that there is a huge demand for Grade-A digital infrastructure in our country.” Lodha Managing Director and CEO Abhishek Lodha said. “Following the government’s focus on improving logistics efficiency and creating jobs in different parts of the country, the platform will plan the development of industrial and logistics parks as well in-city fulfillment centers across multiple cities in India. And we will focus on building and operating this digital infrastructure to the highest levels of environmental sustainability with the view to creating a global benchmark. We’re delighted to expand our partnership with 2 marquee global investors – lvanhoé Cambridge and Bain Capital, who bring extensive experience in this asset class and dedicated resources to support the growth of this platform.”
“This is an exciting partnership that brings together an experienced real estate developer with deep digital infrastructure capabilities with the complementary support of global investors with long track records of success in commercial real estate,” said Ali Haroon, Managing Director at Bain Capital. “We see a sustained, thematic opportunity to support India’s journey to a digital-first economy with high-quality infrastructure, which we believe can have a very positive impact on communities, consumers and businesses throughout the country.”
“This partnership opens up new perspectives for expansion of our logistics portfolio in India, a high conviction thesis well supported by strong sector fundamentals as India enters a digital super cycle”, said Chanakya Chakravarti, lvanhoé Cambridge India Vice President and Managing Director. “We believe the Indian logistics ecosystem continues to offer opportunities driven by positive trends in urbanization, domestic consumption, new impetus to the light manufacturing sector, modernizing multi-modal infrastructure and the rapidly evolving e-commerce sector, which remains largely underpenetrated, compared to other major economies globally. We look forward to expanding our logistics footprint by leveraging Lodha’s proprietary in-city sites, access to land pads in key warehousing nodes and their execution capabilities. The new partnership potentially enables lvanhoé Cambridge access to near city logistics opportunities as operators pivot to establish same day delivery solutions thus creating differentiated value in our portfolio construct and its scale.”
