Although 2018 was marked with economic and trade uncertainty,
not least due to NAFTA negotiations and Brexit withdrawal
proposals, private equity (PE) investment in Canada remained high
at $22.3 billion over 543 transactions.1 These 2018
figures, although shy of the record-breaking aggregate dollar value
and number of deals seen in 2017, still outpaced every other year
going back as far as 2006. By contrast, 2019 got off to a slower
start, with deal values at a fraction of what they were relative to
last year at the same time; while Q2 saw an uptick relative to Q1,
the $3B of investment during the quarter still lagged behind the Q2
figure of 2018 significantly.
In response to these shifting and uncertain times, the following
developments and trends have been solidified throughout 2019 in the
Canadian private equity marketplace: