Following a qualification process, the Ministère des Transports et de la Mobilité durable du Québec (MTMD) issued a call for tenders in 2022 for the construction of the new Île-aux-Tourtes bridge pursuant to the project delivery method known as design-build-finance (DBF). Since this was a DBF, the financing of this project had to be included in the proposals made by the selected candidates. Lavery represented the successful consortium made up of Dragados Canada Inc., Roxboro Excavation Inc. and Construction Demathieu & Bard Inc. Our role required expertise in the following areas: (a)   Governance and corporate law  (b)  Project financing (banking and securities)  (c)   Public procurement (d)  Construction law (e)   Commercial agreements (f)    Taxation  Lavery represented the consortium from the call for proposals to the financial close, including the drafting phase leading up to the awarding of the contract to the consortium. The financing was the most complex part of this transaction. Under the hybrid approach retained for that project, a major credit facility to be granted by a bank syndicate had to be set up, as well the private placement of two tranches of bonds. This involved adjusting the rights and obligations of creditors on both sides within a sophisticated intercreditor agreement. The financing also required parent company guarantees, including from French and Spanish corporations, which required us to find common ground to accommodate the typical requirements of a North American financing and the specific corporate and commercial features applicable in France and Spain. To meet this challenge, we put together a multidisciplinary team, divided up the work in accordance with our professionals’ diverse expertises, and dedicated a team member exclusively to interactions with the MTMD, its lawyers and the issuers of performance bonds typical for this kind of projects. Sound project management practices were essential to the success of this team effort. It is a privilege for Lavery to have participated in this essential project allowing the people of Quebec to obtain a new bridge linking the regions of Montérégie and Montréal. The Lavery team was led by Josianne Beaudry, Nicolas Gagnon, Édith Jacques, David Tournier and André Vautour, and included Véronik Bonneville-Pesant, Katerina Kostopoulos, Jean-François Maurice, Joseph Gualdieri, Siddhartha Borissov-Beausoleil, Alexandre Turcotte, Luc Pariseau, Charles Hugo Gagné, Mickaël Pageau, Jean-Vincent Prévost-Bérubé and Yohann Lévy.

On July 4, 2023, Cultures Gen V, one of Quebec’s leading greenhouse growers, announced the acquisition of Serres Royales. The acquisition furthers Cultures Gen V’s business strategy, which aims to improve Quebec’s food self-sufficiency by expanding sustainable greenhouse growing and offering consumers a wider variety of superior quality products. This transaction makes Cultures Gen V the largest diversified greenhouse grower in Quebec, adding 9 hectares of tomatoes to its current acreage, for a total of 36 hectares. Lavery was privileged to represent Cultures Gen V in the transaction. Not only did the firm implement the group’s pre-transaction refinancing, it also negotiated and closed the transaction. The Lavery team was led by Étienne Brassard with the assistance of Gabrielle Ahélo and France Camille De Mers and the collaboration of Béatrice Bull, Pamela Cifola, Éric Gélinas, Jessica Parent, Chantal Desjardins, James Duffy, Valérie Belle-Isle, Sonia Guérin, Joseph Lauzon-Potts, Arielle Supino, Bernard Trang, Katerina Kostopoulos, Charlotte Dangoisse, David Tournier, Ana Cristina Nascimento, Joëlle Montpetit and Nadine Giguère.

Last October 28, La Granaudière announced that it has obtained more than $50M in financing from Ressources Québec, Investissement Québec and the Caisse Desjardins du Nord de Lanaudière. A team from Lavery represented the three lenders involved in the transaction and with respect to the relations between the various stakeholders in order to successfully complete this project, which will be a showcase for the renewable energy industry in Québec. This financing will enable La Granaudière, a plant producing wood pellets from forest biomass, to complete the construction of its plant by the summer of 2020 and to start producing wood pellets and exporting them to Europe by the end of 2020. The plant will produce nearly 200,000 tonnes of pellets annually, and should create about 180 direct and indirect jobs, including roughly 50 at the production plant in Saint-Michel-des-Saints. This mandate was successfully completed thanks to the extensive expertise of the Lavery team composed mainly by Étienne Brassard, Ali El Haskouri, Katerina Kostopoulos et Bernard Trang.

Lavery is pleased to announce that it has hired five of its articling students as associates. Rosemarie Bhérer Bouffard has joined the Labour and Employment Law group. During her studies, she volunteered with the legal information clinic at Université Laval and the Quebec association for the defence of the rights of retired and pre-retired persons. Shereen Cook has joined the Business Law group. During her studies, she assumed the position of director of the law moot court program: Les simulations de procès - Travaille en Cour, which led her to cooperate with jurists and other legal professionals to draft legal cases. Katerina Kostopoulos has joined the Business Law group. Prior to law school, Katerina obtained a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University with a major in Political Science and a double minor in Philosophy and Neo-Hellenic Studies. Élizabeth Martin-Chartrand has joined the Litigation and Conflict Resolution group. While a law student, Élizabeth served on the executive committees of the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Student Association for Children’s Rights and the Criminal Law Association, and as columnist for the student newspaper.   Jean-François Maurice has joined the Business Law group. During his university studies, Jean-François was involved in various student organizations, often as treasurer of the club or organization. While attending Peking University, he also served as a research assistant in connection with several publications in corporate and business law.