Q-News

February 2011

M&A News - February 2011

Posted in M&A News

Things remained quiet on the M&A front as there were only four private M&A deals reported during February, bringing the yearly total to a mere eight reported transactions.  Two of the acquisitions were made by an Ontario-based private equity group.  On the cross-border front, RIM made an acquisition in the US, and a BC-based manufacturing firm was acquired by a Chinese textile manufacturer.


Canadian M&A Transactions

Toronto’s McLean Watson Investments acquired a controlling stake in William Ashley, the Toronto-based retailer of fine china, crystal, and other tableware. William Ashley was a family business whose founder, Tillie Abrams, passed away in 2010.  Financial details were not disclosed.

Toronto’s IronBridge Equity Partners acquired LaFrentz & Christenson Trucking, a Saskatchewan-based company that provides logistics services to oil and gas companies operating within the province’s Bakken Oil Field.

 

Cross Border M&A

Fulida Group Holdings, a textile manufacturer based in China, acquired BC-based Neucel Specialty Cellulose from a consortium of investors led by New York’s Wellspring Capital Management.  Neucel produces high-purity chemical cellulose which is used in a wide range of manufacturing processes, including rayon filament for garments, pharmaceuticals, consumer products, film, food thickeners, LCD screens and other products.  Financial details were not disclosed.

Research in Motion acquired Gist.  The Seattle-based company has developed a contact management software platform that allows users to aggregate contact-specific data from different social networks, e-mail accounts, and blog posts, therefore solving the challenge of having to go to different sources to get information about people known to the user.

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