100 King St W, Suite 6200, 1 First Cdn Pl, PO Box 50, Toronto, ON
Year called to bar: 2008
James is a partner in Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP’s Corporate Group and is co-chair of the Mining Group. He focuses on mergers & acquisitions, corporate finance and securities, and general corporate matters. He has experience acting for underwriters and issuers in public offerings, including initial public offerings, global private placements, as well as transactions involving inter-listed companies. He also routinely provides ongoing advice to public and private corporations in a wide variety of industries on regulatory compliance matters, corporate governance, and continuous disclosure obligations, and he provides ongoing securities law compliance advice to TSX and TSXV listed issuers, including regarding mineral project disclosure under National Instrument 43-101. James previously served as a member of the Canadian Securities Administrators’ Mining Technical Advisory and Monitoring Committee, which provides guidance to the provincial securities commissions on technical mining matters.
On July 19, 2017, Hydro One Limited (Hydro One) announced that it had entered into an agreement and plan of merger pursuant to which it has agreed to indirectly acquire Avista Corporation (Avista), a pure-play regulated electric and gas utilities holding company, for an aggregate purchase price of approximately US$5.3 billion including the assumption of approximately US$1.9 billion of debt. On July 19, 2017, Hydro One subsequently announced that its direct wholly owned subsidiary, 2587264 Ontario Inc., had agreed to sell to a syndicate of underwriters $1.4-billion aggregate principal amount of 4.00-per-cent convertible unsecured subordinated debentures of Hydro One (the Debentures) represented by instalment receipts on a “bought deal” basis.
Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (Valeant) acquired Salix Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. (Salix) for US$173.00 per share in cash, or a total enterprise value of approximately US$15.8 billion. The transaction closed on April 1, 2015. To partially finance the acquisition, Valeant completed equity and bond offerings, which closed on March 27, 2015. In its equity offer, Valeant issued 7,286,482 shares at a price of US$199.00 per share, for aggregate gross proceeds of approximately US$1.45 billion.
The Manufacturers Life Insurance Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Manulife Financial Corporation, acquired the holding company of The Standard Life Assurance Company of Canada and Standard Life Investments Inc. from Standard Life plc in consideration for a payment of CAD$4 billion in cash.
