Private Equity

Our Group

Miller Thomson’s Private Equity Group consists of senior practitioners and veteran transactional strategists.  Our team is closely integrated with other of the firm’s broad national practices to ensure that our private equity clients can benefit from related expertise that proves necessary to successfully complete their deal, whether that expertise is in banking, tax, antitrust, pensions and benefits, labour and employment, or insolvency, among other areas.

Our Clients

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 Expertise

Our team of senior partners has had considerable experience working with the 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.

When acting for private equity private investor funds, we have developed expertise in dealing 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.

Our experience includes the making of subsequent add-on, or “tuck in” investments, including creating tax efficiencies in the investment group.

We have also provided 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.

With a focus on mid-market private company clients, we often find ourselves acting for vendor shareholders in private equity transactions, as well as for the company being sold.  In these situations, we have learned how to act 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.

Our Experience

For examples of our work in the area of Private Equity, visit our Mergers and Acquisitions service page for our representative transaction list.