Edmonton-based Canadian Western Bank (CWB) is selling the assets of its trust subsidiary, Valiant Trust Co., to transfer agency, Toronto-based Computershare Ltd., for as much as $33 million.
The firms announced an agreement that would see Computershare acquire certain assets of CWB’s Valiant Trust, including its stock transfer, corporate trust and employee plan services businesses. The deal, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, is expected to close in early May. Calgary-based Valiant provides services to approximately 450 Canadian issuers, including a large number of private issuers.
“With this acquisition, our third in two years, Computershare continues to solidify its presence in Western Canada and it marks an important step in our commitment to grow our relationship with Canadian public and private issuers,” said Stuart Swartz, CEO of Computershare Canada.
The bank indicated that it decided to sell these businesses after determining that growing them further would be a challenge. “This deal resulted from a purposeful strategic assessment that started over a year ago, and is supported by similar rationale to that of our recently announced agreement to sell Canadian Direct Insurance,” said Chris Fowler, CWB’s president and CEO.
“While the product lines offered by Valiant have provided solid contributions to our trust services offerings, our ability to profitably grow the stock transfer business was challenged in the face of ongoing industry consolidation and technology investment required to meet evolving client needs for these types of services,” Fowler added. “We’re confident that the deployment of capital from this sale into our faster growing and more strategically aligned core businesses will generate superior returns for CWB shareholders.”
Blair Franklin Capital Partners Inc. is acting as financial advisor to CWB on the transaction.