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| GE tilts at green power protectionism
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Tuesday, June 29, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comLike Kermit the frog, General Electric vice-chairman John Krenicki occasionally laments that it's not easy being green.Mr. Krenicki runs GE's massive energy division - its 85,000 employees posted $37-billion in sales last year - and on the face of it, everything's going his way. Anyone getting into wind power will likely order GE turbines. The same is true on solar, hydro, grids and just about any other technology that keeps the lights on. As a dominant player in green power, Mr. Krenicki would seem to have the world at his feet.
FULL STORY 
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| Street mourns the loss of a citizen
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Friday, June 25, 2010
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The Street lost one of its outstanding citizens on Wednesday, as Gordon Cheesbrough passed away after a brief illness at age 57.Mr. Cheesbrough - Gord or Cheese to his many friends - was an accomplished executive, most recently as co-founder and managing partner at Toronto-based advisory Blair Franklin Capital Partners.
FULL STORY
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| Smart plans biggest tech IPO in decade
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Friday, June 25, 2010
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Smart Technologies launched a long-awaited $600-million (U.S.) initial public offering on Thursday, the largest technology IPO attempted in the Canadian market in the past decade.Calgary-based Smart dominates the market for electronic whiteboards that are replacing blackboard in classrooms and offices. The company is backed by the venture capital arm of Intel Corp. and private equity fund Apex Venture Partners. Sources close to the IPO said Smart will raise $150-million to pay down debt and for general corporate purposes. Intel and Apex plan to sell up to $450-million of subordinated voting shares.
FULL STORY
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| Penny-pinching BayFront off to a blistering start
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Thursday, June 24, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comRob Chalmers, founder of the Street's newest investment bank, is miffed with his partners.It seems one of the proven financiers who walked away from an established dealer to throw in his lot with BayFront Capital Partners used the upstart's photocopier to print the entire prospectus for a junior company. Mr. Chalmers is taking pains to point out that photocopying costs money. While no one is willing to confess to Xerox abuse, the partners seem sincerely sorry.
FULL STORY
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| Brendan Wood changes 'Top Gun' survey
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comCorporate Canada and the institutional investor crowd have very different views of what makes a good analyst, according to the latest research rankings out of Brendan Wood International.
FULL STORY
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| Private equity cashes in on the oil patch
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Thursday, June 17, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comPrivate equity funds are cashing in their chips in the oil patch, with the latest payday coming in the form of the $503-million sale of CanEra Resources to publicly-traded Legacy Oil + Gas.
FULL STORY
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| MEG's message to Street: We are not Athabasca
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comThey are both ambitious players in Alberta's oil sands, each with a huge need for capital.They both have state-owned Chinese backers. One staged a jaw-dropping $1.3-billion initial public offering, the other is attempting a financing on that same massive scale.
FULL STORY
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| AS SLICK SPREADS, OIL SANDS BECKON
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Wednesday, June 16, 2010
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A record of success in the Alberta oil sands and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are expected to whet investors' appetite for a $1.25-billion initial public offering from MEG Energy Corp., the latest in a series of mega-deals from Canada's oil patch.
FULL STORY
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| Three clues to takeover targets in the oil patch
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comWe're sorting out who will be predators and who will be prey in two of Western Canada's most promising new oil and gas regions.The latest sign of the pecking order comes from ARC Energy Trust, which staged a friendly $680-million takeover of Storm Exploration last week. ARC showed it plans to be a dominant force in west-central Alberta's Montney region, where new drilling techniques are opening up a massive natural gas play. Encana and Shell Canada are also expected to have something to say about who dominates this part of the world.
FULL STORY
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| How electronic trading is remaking Streetscape
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Friday, June 11, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comAsk Canadian institutional investors how they feel about electronic stock trading, and the country's biggest money managers will say they are reluctantly embracing the trend.Ask Greenwich Associates what's happening in markets, and the experts say there's an ever-increasing trend to replacing high-priced human traders with low-cost computers. The Boston-based consulting firm has concluded domestic institutions are embracing electronic trading, even if they often don't realize they are making the switch.
FULL STORY
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| Bring us your dullest assets - prisons, schools, hospitals, roads
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Thursday, June 10, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comThe future is bright for owners of some of the world's most boring assets - infrastructure plays such as toll roads, prisons, schools and hospitals.Brick-and-mortar infrastructure, a favourite holding of the pension fund crowd and an asset class that's ignored by just about every other flavour of investor, is expected to return 10 to 15 per cent annually over the next five years, according to a study of the sector released Wednesday by a London, England-based specialty financial consulting firm called bfinance. The performance forecast comes from a survey of global players in this space - most of whom own or manage more than $1-billion of infrastructure assets - done by London-based bfinance executive Vikram Aggarwal.
FULL STORY
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| Couche-Tard shows no stomach for Casey's fight
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Wednesday, June 09, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comAlimentation Couche-Tard Inc. can expect a fight from takeover target Casey's General Stores, and the Montreal-based convenience store chain is showing a notable lack of enthusiasm for the $1.9-billion (U.S.) battle.
FULL STORY
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| A tipping point for private equity
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Tuesday, June 08, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comIf global trends hold true, then investors will soon get a chance to buy a whole lot more of Dollarama, one of the best-performing IPOs seen in recent years.
FULL STORY
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| Teachers puts 35% stake in Maple Leaf on the block
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TARA PERKINS AND ANDREW WILLIS
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Tuesday, June 08, 2010
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The Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan is shopping its stake in Maple Leaf Foods Inc., a major step toward ending the partnership with the McCain family that has controlled one of Canada's biggest consumer products companies for the past 15 years.
FULL STORY
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| Bad timing for Couche-Tard's hostile bid
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Friday, June 04, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comFor a sense of how a sea change in market sentiment can derail the best-laid corporate plans, look no further than what's happening to Alimentation Couche-Tard's hostile $1.9-billion (U.S.) bid for U.S. chain Casey's General Stores.
FULL STORY
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| Manulife can bide its time waiting for AIG unit
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Thursday, June 03, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comWhen Britain's Prudential made a stunning bid for AIG's crown jewel in Asia last year, there was considerable gnashing of teeth at Manulife Financial.Toronto-based Manulife relished a shot at AIA Group, but given its own financial struggles, it could not afford to pay anything near the $35-billion (U.S.) price.
FULL STORY
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| Record bonus pool building at Canada's banks
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Wednesday, June 02, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comThat glug-glug-glug you hear on the Street is the sound of the bonus pool filling up, with Canadian banks on track to boost performance-based pay this year by an average of 10 per cent.
FULL STORY
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| Logibec deal underwhelms big investors
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Tuesday, June 01, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comInvestor opposition is building to a $230-million bid for health care software company Logibec Groupe Informatique Ltee, driven in part by institutional investors' recent success in extracting improved offers for takeover targets.
FULL STORY
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| Barclays unit lands two top financiers
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Saturday, May 29, 2010
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Canada's banks face increased competition from global rivals, with Barclays Capital turning up the heat Friday by landing rainmaker Michael Wilson and star deal maker Bruce Rothney as leaders of its domestic investment bank.
FULL STORY
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| GET MATSR (Smart)
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Andrew Willis
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Friday, May 28, 2010
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Nancy Knowlton threw one of her New York bankers for a loop when they first met to discuss introducing her Calgary tech company to the Wall Street crowd.''She was the spitting image of my high school history teacher, right down to the tweed skirt. She might as well have walked right off the schoolyard,'' says the financier, recalling that first session with the chief executive officer and co-founder of Smart Technologies in the fall of 2009. The banker, whose firm does not allow him to be named, adds: ''Then I stopped to figure out what she was worth, and realized she was one wealthy history teacher.''
FULL STORY
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| Why the banks fight for insurance
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Thursday, May 27, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comCanada's banks are facing repeated broadsides as they slowly, ponderously invade the insurers' turf.Insurance agents, well organized and supremely connected politically, have waged successful battles against sales of insurance products in bank branches and via the bank's websites. However, a few wins on the marketing front shouldn't distract anyone from the eventual outcome to this struggle - the banks will be major players in Canadian insurance. And a look at Bank of Montreal's numbers yesterday shows why this is a war worth fighting.
FULL STORY
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| Look for a sparse lineup to buy the Hurricanes
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ANDREW WILLIS
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
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awillis@globeandmail.comAnother southern U.S. hockey franchise came up for grabs over the weekend, with the long-time owner of the Carolina Hurricanes now officially looking for a minority partner to share the joy, and pain, of trying to sell hockey to the NASCAR nation.
FULL STORY
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