PRIVATE PLACEMENTS

CFI has been in the private placement business for over 25 years, and has established a reputation as a leader in middle market transactions with enterprise values of between $10 million to $100 million. We have originated, structured and placed over $1.25 billion of transactions and we currently manage $800 million of assets for our institutional investors. Currently, there are 40 deals under management in our private debt portfolio.

Our private placement effort is led by Chris Ball (Executive Vice President) who manages a team of 6 originators, in offices located in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. The origination team is supported by dedicated in-house legal resources, and a highly experienced credit team that balances the needs of our clients with those of our investors.

Senior Debt

The origin of our private placement business is rooted in senior debt, and this remains the majority of our assets under management today. Most of our transactions are in infrastructure related areas such as power generation (including hydro and gas fired cogeneration power plants) and social infrastructure (including long term care facilities, nursing homes, and education facilities).

We strive to structure transactions with highly credit worthy revenue streams such as those with payments from large utilities, well-funded corporations, and government or quasi-government entities. As such, we are also currently working on transactions in the solar, wind, bio-mass, bio-fuel, and the natural resource sectors, which have similar low risk characteristics.

We are flexible in terms of deal size and will consider opportunities from $5 million to $100 million. Transactions are placed with institutional investors for terms up to 30 years and generally on a fixed interest rate basis which allows our clients to match their financing terms with their cash flow streams thereby locking in stable and attractive returns on investment. In addition to originating, structuring, and placing senior debt, institutional investors often rely on us to be the lender of record on their behalf and provide loan administration, monitoring, and reporting services.

Mezzanine

Many of our clients are small to medium size growth companies with limited access to growth capital. CFI can custom tailor mezzanine solutions to bridge the gap between senior debt and equity thereby minimizing dilution to owners of companies. Transactions are generally structured as subordinated debt (with or without equity enhancements such as warrants or conversion features to equity) or preferred shares (with or without conversion features). We will consider deal sizes of between $3 million and up with terms from 2 years to 12 years on fixed or floating rate basis. We can place mezzanine capital with institutional investors such as life insurance companies, pension funds, dedicated mezzanine funds, and high net worth individuals or family trusts and offices. Our second private equity fund, which is currently in its marketing phase, will also be capable of investing a portion of its capital in mezzanine investments.

Equity

CFI was instrumental in the early growth of some of Canada's largest publicly traded power development companies. Our clients have included predecessor companies to Algonquin Power, Innergex Renewable Energy, and Boralex. We will consider transaction sizes from $1 million and can place private equity capital with institutional investors such as life insurance companies, pension funds, dedicated private equity funds, and high net worth individuals or family trusts and offices. Our second private equity fund, which is currently in its marketing phase, will also be capable of investing in the placement of private equity capital transactions.