M&A Activity in Canada

Do Canadians fall apart in the mergers and acquisitions space?  Have they missed getting out into foreign business acquisitions too? Not according to information on performance last year:

Canadian Mergers and Acquisition activity increased for the third successive quarter in Q4 with 302 transactions worth approximately $52 billion.  This represents an increase of 12% in the value of deals announced while the number of announcements increased by 9% over the previous quarter.  The Canadian banks and pension funds announced numerous transactions that contributed significantly towards increased cross-border Mergers and Acquisiton activity and a consistent pace of mega deals (deals valued in excess of $1 billion) in the quarter.

 Some interesting aspects of the Q3 results included the following:

• Four of the five major Canadian banks announced large acquisitions for a total of $14.4 billion; three of the four acquisitions were of foreign businesses.
• Almost all of the major Canadian pension funds announced transactions for a total of 12 transactions worth $8.8 billion.
• Bucking a long-term trend, the value of Canadian-led acquisitions abroad exceeded that of foreign-led takeovers by a ratio of 2.5-to-1
• Activity in the mega-deal segment was unchanged from the previous quarter at 9 transactions; total value of mega deals declined slightly from $28 billion in Q3 to $25 billion in Q4
• The Real Estate, Oil & Gas and Industrial Products sectors were the key drivers of M&A activity in Q4 representing 59% of the overall transaction volume 

For more Mergers and Acquisitions information, please see our website:  http://www.loewenpartners.com/

Entrepreneurial capitalism is the spark behind every important advancement

Did you have a candle lit dinner on Earth Day? I find that gesture just like busy work given for homework, a nice gesture but, hey, let's get doing the real work. I think we should be lighting a candle for every entrepreneur in Canada, not feeling bad that we have power and doing a voluntary black out.
Let's be honest, electricity has been the biggest help to reducing the work load in the home, giving women more time to bring up more educated children. 
I get that Earth Hour is a lovely way to try and raise awareness about being stewards of the Earth, and I am for the idea, but the big dilemma is that electricity is what the whole world aspires to achieve. Doesn't it seem so hypocriticial and contradictory that we turn off what we have for one hour? Being from an African country where power outages were the norm, doing a voluntary power outage seems so...I dont' know...so Paris Hilton.
OK - so what do I suggest instead?
Here is my favourite Greenie talking about the value of electricity, why it is needed and perhaps another way of looking after the Earth without needing to go back to the cave light. He also talks about why 1st world people with our electricity use should not be telling other countries how to be green until we figure it out.

http://www.ted.com/talks/h

ans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine.html


Hans Rosling says, "Thank you, industrialization," he says. "Thank you, steel mill." "Thank you, chemical processing industry." If you listen closely, you can hear the startled laughter of Hans Rosling's audience. 
Some people think these life-altering inventions -- the washing machine, indoor heating, iPhones, are the result of some kind of magic pixie dust. They happened just because. Little elves. Random events. Fate. Anything but the truth.
Which is: entrepreneurial capitalism is the spark behind every important advancement in human knowledge, and is the single greatest reason why people's lives are getting better.
So, on Earth Day, I did the laundry and gave thanks that I am living in Canada. I also lit a candle for every green entrepreneur and linked up a solar entrepreneur with a Private Equity fund who might keep the cash flowing. That early stage solar company is one of the green sparks, one of the entrepreneurs already making a difference, and I want to do what I can to help those business owners. Wow, it is tough keeping the cash flow going. 
I asked Sarah Thomson, who is running as a Liberal candidate and who is a super entrepreneur and who's Facebook got me on this rant:
Sarah, I hope you will push for entrepreneurs to work on the issues brought up by Earth Day. Nothing wrong with a bit of back to the cave, dinner in the dark, as a nice sentiment, but I think that one hour in darkness on Earth Day gesture has run its course. 
Time to speak up to encourage the entrpreneurs in this country. (Liberals seem to only think corporatism.) Please bring back the focus on small business and not just restaurants and stores, which seemed to be the only type and level of business discussed at the Mayors' debates I heard.
On Earth Day, we should be thanking entrepreneurs and asking for their green sparks. And asking, as Government, how can the government get out of the way?
What do you think?

Do you have to be mercenary to survive?

Some South African leaders took advantage of the power they suddenly acquired in the heady days after Mandela's release, as the country moved towards democracy. One religious leader stole from his church and cheated on his wife, a smart TV presenter. She found love again with Adam Kahane who I met in the nineties when I was doing strategy with a fast growing South African bank. Kahane did a superb set of scenarios for the future and the whole country picked up his themes when discussing possible futures and the impact on business.
Now Kahane has published a book on love and power. He certainly saw first hand in South Africa those who used power but without love or respect for their constituents. This balance is something Adam believes is needed in business. Adam works with NGOs and Not for Profits and I know he began in Shell Oil where they did put ethics very high up on their list of values. He manages to articulate this tough balance very well and I recommend his book. Here in Canada, when I think of the senior bank people in TD or RBC, I have certainly seen that blend of patriot more than the mercenary. However, that South African bank where I was working when I met Adam was pure mercenary, and they are now a global bank with a solid bank balance. Their culture has mellowed and I am hosting one of their strategists in a few weeks here in Toronto. They are far from the polite Canadian bank culture but I would place my long term money on the South African, mercenary bank over the nect 30 years.
Here is more on Adam Kahane:

Adam Kahane’s book Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change(Berrett-Koehler, 2010) opens with a quote from one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speeches, his last presidential speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “Power without love,” said King, “is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.”

This is a concept that business leaders need to understand, because in times of crisis (and afterward), the people of an enterprise are put under a great deal of stress. Many people in major corporations today are still wondering if they will lose their jobs. A system that follows only the impulses of compassion and solidarity (which Kahane calls love) will lose its competitiveness; a system that follows only the impulses of resolve and purposefulness (which he calls power) will sacrifice its people heedlessly and risk its capability for growth and recovery. A mix of power and love, however, becomes a stance that a leader can hold, and this stance may, in the end, be the single most important factor in enabling a leader to accomplish great things.

 Despite the success of his South African efforts, many participants at Mont Fleur, and in the discussions that followed, found the premise of basing policy on harmony naive. As one African National Congress leader put it, “The only birds that matter here are [not ostriches and flamingoes but] hawks and sparrows!” It turned out that love-oriented solutions are almost impossible to sustain in the predatory atmosphere of any political or competitive power structure. To really make change happen, you need to balance love and power. During the following years, Kahane came to recognize the tension underlying this reality, and to develop some ways to resolve it. That is the basis of the courses he teaches on social change — for example, at the Alia Institute’s annual summer Authentic Leadership in Action program, where he and I are both on the faculty. Kahane sat down with me at last year’s institute, in June 2010 in Halifax, Nova Scotia; he is repeating the course this summer, at the 2011 Alia Institute in Columbus, Ohio.

Want to Pitch Your Company?

Here’s a great opportunity for early stage companies to raise awareness within the Angel and financial community. The Business News Network has a weekly show called “The Pitch”, hosted by the much-loved Andrew Bell.
I was on today at 11:30am, along with Rick Nathan from Kensington Capital. Rick is a great supporter of innovation and ran CVCA.
Quick question: what's the best way to win over BNN's esteemed panel of established venture capitalists and investors? Patriotic messages in Canadian themed greeting cards or the sweet taste of a warm, made to order cookie. Find out on The Pitch.
See Jacoline Loewen on BNN, The Pitch - click here to see the show: 


BNN The Pitch

Cloud Compliance is not that Obvious

We have a guest blogger, Vipool Desai, who is talking about Cloud Compliance. Loewen & Partners has to be compliant to the Ontario Securities Commission and this is a whole new take on the topic:

In the mid 80’s at a time when many small mom and pop businesses were just starting to apply computers in their operations, Apple came out with an endearing commercial:
Two older gentlemen who owned a fish and tackle shop were struggling over set up instructions for a new PC they had just purchased. They had difficulty understanding words like “port” and understanding instructions for installing the software. Finally, in the last scene, their administrative assistant popped her head in the office while the two fellows were still struggling. It was obviously night time by then, as seen through the window of the office. She told them she needed to go home and then pointed out, “at this stage, your computer is going to put us all out of business”. The men look up, dumbfounded.
Thirty years, later technology has advanced to such a stage that most businesses no longer require expensive in-house hardware or software. They just need a fast internet connection to plug into computing power available on the web. Physical servers with installed software are now kept in giant football size mega data centres throughout the world and operated by companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft.
Their computing power is available for rent by the month, week, day or even the minute depending on need. This trend, referred to as cloud computing, is now being applied by many global companies. Cloud computing allows operating companies to avoid the three greatest technology costs and challenges;

1. costs of regularly administering internal hardware and software
2. costs of running a business with obsolete internal hardware and software; and
3. cost of regularly updating obsolete internal hardware and software.

If one replaces the words “internal hardware and software” in the above, sentence with “Compliance Policies, Procedures, Forms, Logs and Operating Protocol”, it perfectly encapsulates the cost of compliance for independent firms. The biggest compliance costs are:

1. costs of regularly administering Compliance Policies, Procedures, Forms, Logs and
2. Operating Protocol
3. costs of running a business with obsolete Compliance Policies, Procedures, Forms,
4. Logs and Operating Protocol; and
5. cost of regularly updating obsolete Compliance Policies, Procedures, Forms, Logs
6. Operating Protocol.

Registered firms often mistakenly assume there is a point in time when “compliance is under control”. This could be when their registration is complete, compliance manual updated or when they pass their most recent regulatory review. However, this assumption is as true as expecting that windows 97 is the last application program you will ever need. The effectiveness of a firm’s Compliance Structure will naturally drift due to changes in, regulation, the business, staffing, regulator focus, and industry changes.
For more information, please contact:
Vipol Desai, Ara Compliance info@aracompliance.com.