Desjardins Capital

Desjardins Capital is a private equity and venture capital arm of Mouvement des caisses Desjardins specializing in startups, venture debt, mezzanine, early venture, mid venture, late venture, middle market, mature and later stage. The firm does not invest retail, company turnaround, and venture capital investment firms. The firm seeks to invest in healthcare, trading companies and distributors, agricultural services, and life sciences sectors. The firm’s life sciences investments includes the firm focuses on the biotechnology and pharmaceutical fields with a particular focus on therapeutic products, medical equipment, and services, at all stages of their development. It also seeks to invest in life sciences companies having a proprietary intellectual property, a multi-product development strategy, assets less than $50 million, net worth less than $20 million, and having 50 percent of its staff based in Québec. It seeks to invest in Quebec with a focus on Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, Charlevoix and Haute Côte-Nord, Côte-Nord, Chaudières-Appalaches, Quebec City, Central Quebec, Eastern Townships, Montreal, Outaouais, Abitibi-Témiscamingue, Nord-du-Québec and Northern Québec, Eastern Montérégie, Richelieu-Yamaska, Mauricie, Laval and Laurentians, Lanaudière , Bas-Saint-Laurent, Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeline, Côte-Nordat, South Shore and North Shore, Greater Montreal, and Center and East of Montréal. The firm seeks to invest between $0.09 million and $24.22 million in form of equity and between $0.09 million and $484 million in form of debt. The firm invests in businesses and cooperatives. Within businesses it seeks to invest in development capital. It provides capital for acquisitions and mergers, expansion and modernization, management buyout, business transfer and buyout, innovation, development of cooperatives, increasing working capital. It does not invest in natural resource exploration, and financial services. The firm invests in industrial, manufacturing, service sectors, technology and telecommunication sector. The firm’s industrial investments include industrial technology, from manufacturing to nanotechnology, as well as the chemical, electronic, energy-related technology, food, and heavy industry sectors. Within information technology and telecommunications, it seeks to invest in information management, knowledge management, telecommunication equipment, microelectronic, security, and Internet services as well as biotechnology. The firm provides both equity and loans. In case of equity, it can invest for periods of 5 to 8 years, requires board participation and can be a minority or majority shareholder. It provides unsecured loans for 3 to 5 years. It can also finance through instruments that fall between senior debt and equity. The firm seeks to invest up to $20 million with a horizon of five to eight years, and take the form of common or preferred shares, debentures (convertible or non-convertible, participatory), or mezzanine. The firm provides development capital of less than $5 million in the industrial sector in all of Québec’s other administrative regions. It invests between $.1million and $20 million to support businesses with growth or acquisition projects in the industrial sector across all Québec regions. It also invests in small and medium sized companies based in the Greater Montreal region in Canada. The firm typically provides mezzanine capital to companies which have a minimum of two years of profitability, has projects involving an acquisition or consolidation, a management buyout, an expansion, and a recapitalization or a succession. It prefers to hold minority stakes in its portfolio companies. Within cooperatives, it invests in all business sectors except natural resource exploration and financial services. Cooperatives active in the tourism and recreation sector are eligible provided they are managed by a seasoned operator, offer products and services other than simply lodging services and have a history of profitability. The real estate sector is eligible in the context of housing cooperatives. Amounts of over $0.2 million are invested for periods that vary generally between 3 to 10 years. It provides worker shareholder cooperative financing to cooperatives with worker-members from the same employer and whose payroll represents over 80% of that of the company. This type of financing, in the form of a non-guaranteed loan, provides worker shareholder cooperatives with financing to acquire or to grow their equity participation in the company that employs its members. It provides Desjardins cooperative financing to support development and growth plans, for the medium or long term in the form of a non-guaranteed loan, participatory or not, it may also take the form of privileged shares, participatory or not. It provides Network Growth Capital to cooperative network organizations to support members of their respective networks. These cooperative leaders may be cooperative federations or cooperatives that exert significant influence on their network. Cooperative must be willing to establish a joint credit committee (made up of cooperative leader and Desjardins Business Capital régional et coopératif) to review and authorize requests. The firm was formerly known as Investissement Desjardins. Desjardins Capital was founded in 1974 and is based in Québec, Canada with additional offices across Québec, Canada.