Resources Articles of Interests

Cross Border Activity - December 2007

Posted in

Cross border financing continued to slow in December, however M&A activity saw 3 Canadian firms acquired by companies south of the border. 

Details of December’s cross border activity are listed below.
  

U.S. Activity in Canada

  • First Reserve Corporation (Connecticut), a private equity firm that specializes in the energy industry, led an equity issue by Plasco Energy Group Inc. (Ottawa) with total proceeds amounting to $54 million. 
     
  • ProActive Recycling Inc. (Ontario) received an undisclosed amount of private equity funding from KCA Partners Ltd. (San Francisco).  ProActive recycles waste ink generated by commercial printers that would otherwise be put in landfills or incinerated.


Cross Border M&A

  • Private investment firm TPG Capital (Texas) acquired Axcan Pharma Inc. (Quebec), a pharmaceutical company focused on gastrointestinal disorders for $1.3 billion.
     
  • Shareholders and optionholders approved the proposed acquisition of Aspreva Pharmaceuticals Corp. (British Columbia) by Galenica Group (Switzerland) for US$915 million.
     
  • Houghton Mifflin Co. (Massachusetts) agreed to sell its college unit to Cengage Learning (Kentucky) for $750 million in cash.  The acquisition is being partially funded by Apax Partners (New York) and OMERS (Toronto), which acquired Cengage earlier this year for around $7.7 billion.
     
  • CIP Canada Investment Inc. acquired all of the issued and outstanding common shares of Stratos Global Corporation (Maryland).  The total transaction value, including the assumption of debt, is US$636 million.
     
  • Software firm Irdeto (Amsterdam) acquired Cloakware for US$72.5 million.  Cloakware, which is headquartered in Virginia but has a large portion of its research and development operations in Ottawa, will be able to access customers through Irdeto’s European and Asian operations.
     
  • MVC Capital (New York) invested $30 million in portfolio company Ohio Medical Corp., in order to support the acquisition of Amvex Corp. (Toronto), a manufacturer of respiratory therapy devices.  Guggenheim Partners (Chicago) and AEA Investors (New York) provided leveraged acquisition financing.
     
  • Versata Enterprises Inc. (Texas) will acquire all of NUVO Network Management Inc. (Ottawa) outstanding shares in an all-cash transaction valued at $0.57 per share, or approximately $17.6 million.
     
  • Aptilon Corporation (Quebec), a leading provider of physician access through its innovative alternative sales and marketing channel, agreed to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Mikich Company (North Carolina), operating Med2020.com and GasJobs.com, two U.S.-based physician job-search and employment referral websites.  Aptilon will pay total consideration of approximately $400,000 for the shares of Mikich Company.
     
  • ImmunoVaccine Technologies Inc. (Nova Scotia) agreed to acquire Immunotope Inc. (Pennsylvania), combining the two companies efforts in vaccine development.  Both companies are privately held, and terms of the deal were not disclosed.