On June 22, 2018, Axium Infrastructure (Axium) and Manulife Financial Corporation (Manulife), through a special-purpose acquisition vehicle Northwestern Hydro Acquisition Co Inc., completed their acquisition of a 35% indirect equity interest in the Northwest British Columbia Hydroelectric Facilities (the Facilities) from AltaGas Ltd. (AltaGas). The Facilities consist of the Forrest Kerr hydroelectric facility (installed capacity of 214 MW), the Volcano Creek hydroelectric facility (installed capacity of 17 MW) and the McLymont Creek hydroelectric facility (installed capacity of 72 MW). The Facilities, which are located in northwestern British Columbia, sell power to BC Hydro pursuant to long-term power purchase agreements.
The aggregate purchase price for the minority interest was approximately $922 million. Royal Bank of Canada provided debt financing to the Axium/Manulife consortium on the transaction.
Axium and Manulife were represented internally by Julie Chabot, Vice President, Legal Affairs at Axium, and by Myra Michail, Managing Director and Counsel, North American Investments at John Hancock, and externally by Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP with a team consisting of Nick Williams, Anthony Spadaro and Marc Pontone (corporate/M&A/finance), Gabriella Lombardi and Stefanie Milner (commercial real estate), Sarah Powell and Debbie Elmhirst (environmental and Indigenous), Anita Banicevic (competition, antitrust and foreign investment) and Chris Anderson and Marc André Gaudreau Duval (tax). Christine Kowbel and Edward Wilson of Lawson Lundell LLP advised Axium and Manulife with respect to certain British Columbia regulatory and real property issues.
AltaGas was represented internally by Brad Grant, Vice President and General Counsel, and Cassandra Calder, Corporate Counsel, and externally by Stikeman Elliott LLP with a team consisting of Christopher Nixon, Patrick McNally, Kevin Guenther and Brian Campbell.
Royal Bank of Canada was represented by McCarthy Tétrault LLP with a team consisting of Gordon Baird, Heba Al-Shakarchi and Taha Qureshi (financial services), Paul Cassidy (environmental and Indigenous), David Woollcombe (corporate/M&A), Joy Ren, Madeleine Hawkins and Tiffany Misri (real property) and Kerry Lui (energy).