G.C. Andersen Capital Partners is Financial Advisor to Cooper in SMS Acquisition
G.C. Andersen Partners was exclusive financial advisor to G. Cooper Equipment in its recent acquisition of SMS Rents, the investment banking and advisory firm recently announced. G.C. Andersen Partners also arranged an $80 million senior credit facility to complete the acquisition through its wholly owned broker-dealer G.C. Andersen Partners.
G.C. Anderson has completed transactions totaling more than $450 million in the past 18 months.
Cooper Equipment, one of Canada’s leading equipment rental companies, is a portfolio company of SeaFort Capital, a Halifax, N.S.-based private investment firm. SMS Rents was a division of SMS Construction and Mining Systems, a major Canadian construction equipment business that is a member of the Sumitomo Corp. Group.
“By combining SMS Rents and Cooper, we are creating a strong Canadian business of considerable scale and 21 full-service branches with over 300 employees, which will provide us broad geographic coverage across Ontario and Quebec,” said Darryl Cooper, CEO of Cooper Equipment.
“We have had a long relationship with the Cooper Equipment team, having represented them in 2013 when they received the initial investment from SeaFort Capital, and are pleased to have played a role in this significant transaction for the company, which now positions Cooper Equipment as one of the leading equipment rental companies in Eastern Canada,” said Scott Hadfield, managing director at G.C. Andersen.
“G.C. Andersen has extensive experience in the equipment rental business and outstanding relationships throughout the financing community,” added Rob Normandeau, president of SeaFort Capital.
About the Author
Michael Roth
Editor
Michael Roth has covered the equipment rental industry full time for RER since 1989 and has served as the magazine’s editor in chief since 1994. He has nearly 30 years experience as a professional journalist. Roth has visited hundreds of rental centers and industry manufacturers, written hundreds of feature stories for RER and thousands of news stories for the magazine and its electronic newsletter RER Reports. Roth has interviewed leading executives for most of the industry’s largest rental companies and manufacturers as well as hundreds of smaller independent companies. He has visited with and reported on rental companies and manufacturers in Europe, Central America and Asia as well as Mexico, Canada and the United States. Roth was co-founder of RER Reports, the industry’s first weekly newsletter, which began as a fax newsletter in 1996, and later became an online newsletter. Roth has spoken at conventions sponsored by the American Rental Association, Associated Equipment Distributors, California Rental Association and other industry events and has spoken before industry groups in several countries. He lives and works in Los Angeles when he’s not traveling to cover industry events.