Canada-based broker and investment group Canaccord Financial is buying Genuity Capital Markets for £159 million in shares and cash.
Canada-based broker and investment group Canaccord Financial is buying Genuity Capital Markets for £159 million in shares and cash.
Based in Toronto and listed there and on AIM, Canaccord is buying five year-old Genuity for its strength in the lucrative deal underwriting market in North America and the UK. Canaccord is issuing shares and paying C$30 million (£13 million) cash in a deal which values Genuity at nearly C$286 million.
David Kassie, chairman and chief executive officer of Genuity, which led 13 underwritings last year with an average size of C$109 million each, will join the board of Canaccord, along with colleague Philip Evershed. Genuity’s earnings have fluctuated with the market, surging from C$17.6 million in the year to January 2007 to C$84 million in 2007-08 before plunging to nothing in 2009-09 and bouncing to nearly C$32million in 2009-10.
Canaccord chairman Peter Brown says joining forces with Genuity makes the company’s goal of demonstrating Canadian leadership ‘even more of a reality’.
