Specialty lender Element Financial Corp. plans to take over special purpose acquisition corporation (or SPAC) Infor Acquisition Corp. to add firepower and connections to Element at a time when the company has ambitious plans to expand into credit markets the banks are exiting.
Element's friendly offer, the first deal for a Canadian SPAC since the sector sprang to life in 2015, is a share exchange that values Infor at $220-million. That's how much cash Infor holds after an initial public offering last year, and Infor's founders say the best way to put this money to work is to combine forces with a growth-oriented finance company.
In a separate but related transaction, Element announced in February that it plans to split into two companies. There is an auto fleet finance business with $19-billion in assets that will keep the Element name. And there is a specialty lending company with $8-billion in assets that announced Monday it will be known as ECN Capital Corp. The split is expected to take place by the end of the year.
It's ECN Capital, headed by current Element CEO Steven Hudson, that is offering to acquire Infor.
The Infor deal, which requires approval from the SPAC's shareholders, will see two executives with a track record for successfully competing with the big banks join ECN Capital: Infor CEO Neil Selfe will become ECN Capital's executive vice-chairman and Infor co-founder William Holland, chairman of CI Financial Corp., will join the ECN Capital board. Story
CIBC builds private capital and tech focus
CIBC World Markets is building out a new investment banking team focused on private capital to strengthen its ties to large, institutional money managers.
As the country's large pension funds and other private equity groups account for an increasingly significant portion of the deal environment, CIBC has been repositioning itself to serve them.
"Our pension plans, managers of private capital and sovereign wealth fund clients are playing increasingly important roles in Canada and around the world. Having a dedicated team to focus on these pools of capital across their many investment activities is paramount given their critical role in financial and investing markets," Paul Farrell, head of Canadian investment-banking and private capital operations at CIBC, said.
To bolster the newly formed group, Michelle Khalili will rejoin CIBC as a managing director on Sept. 6, having previously been head of Canadian equity capital markets at Goldman Sachs. In her new role, she will build the bank's coverage of natural resource sector opportunities with a specific focus on investors with large pools of capital such as pension and sovereign wealth funds, according to an internal memo.
Ms. Khalili previously worked for CIBC for more than a decade with the bank's equity capital markets group. Story
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