Allegiance Capital Corp., a full-service investment banking firm based in Dallas, Tex., today announced the opening of a new office in Vancouver.

As the gateway of the lucrative pan-Pacific export market, Vancouver is a transportation hub for transcontinental highway and rail routes and is one of the largest seaports on the west coast.

By conducting more than $43 billion in trade with over 90 countries annually, Vancouver’s strategic position gives Allegiance Capital a tremendous opportunity to service the growing energy, high-tech, forest, mining, biotechnology and film industries in this robust region of Western Canada.

According to the Canadian Venture Capital Association, a record was set on the number of business transactions closed during the first quarter of 2007. As U.S. growth has been spilling over into Canada, the private capital markets are picking up momentum as 36 buyout transactions totaling $5.1 billion were disclosed during the quarter. Tremendous investment growth came from the high-tech sector, and private equity was invested in software, communications, networking, electronics and semiconductors. Investments in biopharmaceutical and other life science companies also increased during the past year, and transactions in clean tech companies were at the highest level in six years.

“The business climate in Vancouver is robust as investment by private equity buyout firms continues to accelerate,” says David Lonsdale, president of Allegiance Capital. “This region is an economic hub that is primed for continued growth, and Allegiance plans to work aggressively to initiate a number of merger and acquisitions throughout the region in order to capitalize on this high level of investment activity. For that reason, we picked a seasoned executive, Jason Hiebert, as our partner to head up our operations in Vancouver.”


An engineer by training and a deal-making entrepreneur at heart, Hiebert is Allegiance Capital’s vp and business representative in Western Canada. Based in Vancouver, his role will be to identify companies looking to expand into the U.S. and Canadian markets primarily through mergers or acquisitions. According to Lonsdale, Hiebert is well established within the Vancouver business community, and has many years of experience in running and managing a variety of business ventures, making him uniquely qualified to lead Allegiance’s Canadian operations.

Allegiance Capital is a full-service investment banking firm specializing in the middle market (companies with revenue from US$10 million to US$500 million), with offices in Dallas, New York, Tulsa, Okla., Vancouver, British Columbia, Shanghai and Tel Aviv.