Overview
Miller Thomson’s Private Equity Group assists clients ranging from large pension funds to private equity private investor funds with a variety of services, including structuring of transactions, dealing with management equity incentive plans and structuring private equity investments for non-Canadian funds, among others. Our team of senior practitioners and veteran transactional strategists is closely integrated with our firm’s other practices to ensure that our private equity clients can benefit from related expertise that proves necessary to successfully complete their respective deals, whether that expertise is in banking, tax, antitrust, pensions and benefits, labour and employment, or insolvency, among other areas.
Our clients are representative of Canada’s private equity marketplace, from large pension funds, many of which have been active participants in the private equity space to private equity private investor funds of various sizes, most often focused on the mid-market private company. We have particular expertise in working with investment, including foreign investment, in regulated industries. Financial Institutions, Telecommunications and Broadcasting and Health Care are among the sectors our clients invest in, and we can assist in the development of structures that permit the highest permissible levels of foreign ownership.
Our experience includes:
- Acting for large pension funds: We are familiar with structuring of transactions within specific investment restrictions, both when acting for regulated entities, and when acting for their co-investors, both domestic and non-Canadian.
- Acting for private equity private investor funds: We can assist with management equity incentive plans, including in a cross-border context, as well as creating structures that, where appropriate, permit certain pre-transaction shareholders to maintain participation in the company in which interests are being sold.
- Making of subsequent add-on or “tuck-in” investments, including creating tax efficiencies in the investment group.
- Providing advice in structuring private equity investments for non-Canadian funds, in a way that minimizes taxes on profits and return of gain and capital to the ultimate investor/beneficiary.
- Acting for vendor shareholders in private equity transactions, as well as for the company being sold: With a focus on mid-market private company clients, our Group acts in a way that produces the best result for a shareholder group, often including family members with differing objectives in a sale process, including the provision of tax advice to the company to be sold and its various shareholders.
