BCE completes $862M bought deal equity offering

On December 11, 2015, BCE Inc. (BCE), Canada’s largest communications company, completed a bought deal common share offering for total aggregate gross proceeds of $862,838,100. BCE issued 15,111,000 common shares at a price of $57.10 per common share, including the 1,971,000 common shares issued as a result of the exercise in full of the over-allotment option granted to the syndicate of underwriters. The bought deal public offering was initially announced on November 23, 2015.

The common shares were offered by way of a short form prospectus dated December 2, 2015, in all of the provinces of Canada and were also offered by way of private placement in the United States and internationally. The net proceeds of the offering are being used for general corporate purposes including reducing financial leverage.

The syndicate of underwriters was led by BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. and RBC Dominion Securities Inc. and included CIBC World Markets Inc., National Bank Financial Inc., TD Securities Inc., Barclays Capital Canada Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Canada Inc., Desjardins Securities Inc., Merrill Lynch Canada Inc., Scotia Capital Inc., Canaccord Genuity Corp, J.P. Morgan Securities Canada Inc., Morgan Stanley Canada Limited, Credit Suisse Securities (Canada) Inc., Goldman Sachs Canada Inc. and Macquarie Capital Markets Canada Ltd.

BCE was represented by an in-house team led by Michel Lalande (Senior Vice-President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary), Ildo Ricciuto (Assistant General Counsel, Financings & Compliance) and Geneviève Filion (Senior Legal Counsel). BCE was also represented by Stikeman Elliott LLP with a team that included Jean Marc Huot, Benoît Dubord, Jeremy Sculnick and Charlotte Verdebout (securities) and Franco Gadoury and Philippe Kattan (tax). Torys LLP acted as US counsel to BCE with a team consisting of Mile Kurta and Jason Zhou (securities).