Shoppers Drug Mart Completes Private Placement

Certain institutional and other shareholders of Shoppers Drug Mart Corp. completed, on December 18, 2003, a private placement of Shoppers Drug Mart common shares. The offering was for 4.95 million common shares at $28 per share for gross proceeds of $138.6 million. Merrill Lynch Canada Inc., CIBC World Markets Inc., RBC Dominion Securities Inc. and Scotia Capital Inc. co-led the underwriting syndicate, which also included BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc., TD Securities Inc., National Bank Financial, Credit Suisse First Boston Canada Inc. and Morgan Stanley Canada Ltd. The company did not receive any of the proceeds from the private placement.

Shoppers Drug Mart was represented in-house by Bryna Goldberg, executive vice-president; Richard Alderson, vice-president, legal; and Barbara Ruddy, counsel; and by Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, with a team that included Mark DesLauriers, Phil Lefko and Andrew Moshoian (corporate and securities), and assisted by Alex Pankratz (tax) in Toronto. The underwriters were represented by Torys LLP, under the direction of Merrill Lynch’s in-house counsel Marcelo Cosma. The Torys team included Kevin Morris, Adam Armstrong and Rima Ramchandani in Toronto and Dan Miller and Darren Baccus in New York.