Practice Areas & Industries: Ogilvy Renault LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Our mergers and acquisitions practice encompasses all aspects of public and private M&A, including domestic, cross-border, and international transactions. Our M&A practitioners are known for their deal-making skills and for finding innovative solutions to the complex issues that arise in a fast-paced deal environment.

We focus on obtaining a clear understanding of our clients' business objectives and then partnering with them to achieve those objectives. Any M&A transaction, large or small, represents a business-critical undertaking, which is why we feel that working as integral members of a client's transaction team results in the most successfully planned and executed deals.

We represent a variety of players in M&A transactions, including:

• Bidders
• Targets
• Boards of directors and special committees
• Controlling shareholders
• Institutional and private equity investors
• Acquisition financiers
• Investment dealers
• Regulatory authorities

Clients also benefit from our expertise in related practice areas, including tax, competition/antitrust, foreign investment review, litigation, employment and labour, pensions and benefits, intellectual property, environmental and real estate matters. Our full service practice enables us to provide comprehensive legal solutions at all stages of an M&A mandate; from the planning phase to the post-closing integration phase.

Our M&A practitioners are recognized for their M&A expertise in Chambers Global Guide to the World's Leading Lawyers, the International Financial Law Review 1000, the Practical Law Company: Which Lawyer? - Canada and the Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory, among other publications. In addition, two of our senior partners served on the Investment Dealers Association of Canada's Committee on Take-Over Bid Regulation (the Zimmerman Committee), whose report became the basis for new take-over bid legislation enacted across Canada in 2001 and updated in 2008.

CONTACTS
Francis R. Legault
Terence S. Dobbin

Services Available

• Acquisition financing
• Acquisitions
• Competition Act (antitrust) pre-merger notification
• Directors and officers' duties and liability
• Dissent and appraisal rights
• Due diligence
• Foreign investment approval (Investment Canada)
• Going-private transactions
• Investment dealer mandates (including fairness opinions and valuations)
• Mergers and amalgamations
• Plans of arrangement
• Private equity investment
• Proxy contests
• Recapitalizations and reorganizations
• Related party transactions
• Shareholder rights plans
• Special committee advisory work
• Spin-offs and divestitures
• Strategic alliances and joint ventures
• Take-over bids and issuer bids
• Take-over bid litigation and regulatory hearings
• Take-over bid preparedness and defence planning