Miller Thomson represented Digital Colony (now Digital Bridge), a subsidiary of Colony Capital, Inc. (NYSE: CLNY), a leading global investment management firm, dedicated to strategic opportunities in digital infrastructure, with regards to its CAD 720 million acquisition of Cogeco Peer 1, a managed hosting and cloud services provider. This transaction, which was concluded on May 1, 2019, created Canada’s first neutral-host provider of small cell and 5G infrastructure and enterprise and wholesale fiber connectivity.
The transaction was also Digital Colony’s first direct asset purchase in Canada, which may mark the beginning of a trend where established Canadian public corporations divest some of their non-core assets to foreign corporations that can turn them into profitable endeavors. On August 19, 2019, the senior management teams of Cogeco Peer 1 and Digital Bridge decided to rename the company Aptum Technologies, which means adaptability and represents Aptum’s core business and vision for the future.
Cogeco Peer 1’s portfolio includes over 3,300 route kilometers of owned, dense metro fiber in greater Toronto and Montréal, as well as several data centres across North America and Europe which serve a global blue-chip customer base. The new entity, recently renamed Aptum Technologies, will include a fibre division which will be Canada’s first independent neutral-host provider of small cell and 5G infrastructure and enterprise and wholesale fiber connectivity, as well as a data centre division, which will concentrate on enabling multi-cloud services for enterprises while reinforcing its role as a leading hybrid-solutions managed service provider.
Miller Thomson acted on behalf of the purchaser, Digital Colony, with a team led by Andrew Cohen (Corporate/M&A), Andrew Etcovitch and John Israel Galambos (Corporate Tax), and comprising of Philippe St-Louis, Philipp Park, Lawrence Wilder, Elissa Brock, Jamie Eichenbaum, Louis-Philippe Borduas, Jean Bernard Ricard, Grégory Morin-Maltais, Julien Morier and Francis Dumoulin (Corporate/M&A), Nora Osbaldeston, Ethan Campbell and Jean-Charles Panzini (Financial Services), Chantal Joubert, Alexandre Hébert, Danielle Parry, Nadia Guizani and Stuart Chaimberg (Real Estate & Leasing), Eric Dufour (Competition), Lisa Goodfellow, Greg Bush and Kim Ozubko (Labour & Employment), Ron Choudhury (Sales Tax), Claire Durocher (Environmental and Regulatory), as well as Lonnie-Brodkin Schneider, Alexandre Ajami and Karen Durell (IP).
