66 Wellington St W, Suite 5300, TD Bank Twr, Toronto, ON
Year called to bar: 1993 (ON)
Geoff is a partner in the firm’s Litigation Group in the Toronto office. As a leading litigator on corporate and commercial matters, Geoff represents a broad spectrum of organizations in contract disputes; shareholder disputes; banking disputes; tax disputes; administrative law litigation; constitutional litigation; Indigenous law disputes; and insolvency and bankruptcy cases. Highly effective and equally at ease as trial and appellate counsel, he consistently provides high-quality, strategic advice to clients and successfully resolves precedent-setting cases before all levels of Canadian courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada, and in domestic and international arbitrations. He is an Honorary Overseas Member of the Commercial Bar Association of London, England (COMBAR); and an Advocacy Advisor for the Supreme Court Advocacy Institute. Geoff’s book, Canadian Contractual Interpretation Law is the leading Canadian treatise on contractual interpretation. It has been repeatedly cited by the Supreme Court of Canada, and by lower courts across Canada.
The sale of Pure Multi-Family REIT LP (“Pure”) to Cortland Partners, LLC (“Cortland”) completed on September 27, 2019. Cortland acquired all of Pure’s outstanding: (i) Class A units for US$7.61 per unit
On January 5, 2018, BCE Inc. (Bell) completed its acquisition of all of the approximately 11.4 million common shares of AlarmForce Industries Inc. (AlarmForce) for a total aggregate consideration of approximately $182 million The Acquisition is part of Bell’s Connected Home strategy.
Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB)(NYSE:ENB) (Enbridge) completed its stock-for-stock transaction with Spectra Energy Corp (NYSE:SE) (Spectra Energy), creating North America’s largest energy infrastructure company with an enterprise value of approximately $165 billion. The transaction valued Spectra Energy’s common stock at approximately $37 billion and is the largest foreign acquisition ever completed by a Canadian company.
On July 2, 2015, Euronet Worldwide, Inc. a leading electronic payments provider, acquired XE.com Inc., a global leader in digital foreign exchange information.
Euronet will use approximately $60 million from its revolving credit agreement together with about 640,000 Euronet shares and an undisclosed amount of cash to complete the deal. The deal provides Euronet a large Internet presence and user base attuned to foreign currency, while Euronet offers XE breadth and depth in foreign currency products, a strong balance sheet and geographic expansion opportunities.
On May 20, 2015, BCE Inc. (BCE) and Rogers Communications Inc. (Rogers) completed their acquisition of GLENTEL Inc. (GLENTEL), a Canadian-based multi-carrier mobile products distributor.
ORBCOMM Inc., a global provider of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions, completed the acquisition of SkyWave Mobile Communications Inc., the largest M2M service provider on the Inmarsat global L-band satellite network for approximately US$130 million. SkyWave, an Ottawa-based company, will add more than 250,000 subscribers, 400 channel partners, and annualized revenues of over $60 million to ORBCOMM.
Fairfax Financial Holdings Limited, through a wholly-owned subsidiary, acquired Pethealth Inc. on November 14, 2014. The acquisition was effected under a statutory plan of arrangement of Pethealth pursuant to which holders of Pethealth common shares received $2.79 in cash per each common share and holders of Pethealth preferred shares received $2.79 in cash per each preferred share plus all accrued and unpaid dividends up to, but excluding, the effective date of the plan of arrangement. The transaction was valued at approximately $100 million.
