Quebecor CEO Pierre Karl Péladeau.Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press
Billionaire Pierre Karl Péladeau is buying Quebec food distributor Colabor Group Inc. out of bankruptcy protection, adding to a stable of assets in the province that now includes the Montreal Alouettes football team and transport company Téo Taxi.
Mr. Péladeau, whose family controls telecom and media company Quebecor Inc. QBR-B-T, won court approval Monday for the purchase, according to his spokesperson, Annick Bélanger. He’s making it through his personal investment firm, Financière Outremont.
The transaction includes most of the assets of Colabor and subsidiaries Norref Fisheries Quebec Inc. and Transport Paul-Émile Dubé Ltée. It doesn’t include the assets of Le Groupe Resto-Achats, which is being bought by a separate group of investors.
“We want to revitalize the operations of this distribution company that has been part of our community for over 60 years in a critical sector of the food supply chain,” Mr. Péladeau said in a statement last week that confirmed his interest.
“In addition to maintaining jobs in Quebec and keeping the operations of a well-established Quebec company here, we are convinced of the need to safeguard this important link in our supply chain, a link that contributes to our food sovereignty,” he said.
It’s the latest acquisition for Mr. Péladeau, one of Quebec’s most well-known businessmen and a former leader of the separatist Parti Québécois party. In addition to the Alouettes and Téo Taxi, the executive also controls Starlink Aviation, a private aircraft charter company, and has a minority stake in Moment Factory, a Montreal entertainment studio.
Péladeau loses bid to remake Transat’s board
Mr. Péladeau recently mounted an effort to take control of the board of leisure travel provider Transat AT, criticizing the company’s move to renegotiate its $762-million bailout debt owed to taxpayers in a deal that gave Ottawa a 20-per-cent ownership stake. But he failed after shareholders including the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec rejected his nominees at a meeting last month.
Since then, Mr. Péladeau has been buying more Transat shares and now holds a stake topping 10 per cent, according to a March 24 statement by Financière Outremont. He has likened his effort to control the travel company to a baseball game in its early innings.
Turning Colabor around could prove equally challenging. The company, a distributor and wholesaler of food and related products serving the hotel, restaurant and institutional markets in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces, had been struggling to deal with problems including a major cybersecurity incident last summer that hit its internal IT systems and resulted in lost sales.
Colabor filed for bankruptcy protection in January under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act. Chief executive officer Kelly Shipway now has to rebuild its customer base after at least one major client, Santé Québec, turned to rival suppliers amid the food company’s financial difficulties.
“This is now about relaunching Colabor 2.0 on more solid footing,” said Yanick Blanchard, chief restructuring officer for Colabor. “I’m sure the new owners and management will be able to put the right strategies in place to make the company profitable.”