Tricor Pacific Capital has made its debut investment in the real estate services sector by purchasing a minority stake in Canadian real estate company Avison Young for $40 million.
Avison Young provides commercial real estate investment sales and advisory services. Tricor Pacific invested in the company through its Tricor Pacific Capital Partners IV fund, which collected C$555 million ($547 million; €397 million) in 2006 and is nearly fully invested.
“We have a couple more transactions that we’re working on, but we’re coming to the end of our investment period,” Tricor co-founder and managing director Roderick Senft told Private Equity International.
Senft added the firm would likely begin pre-marketing its next fund in the second quarter of 2012.
“We haven’t developed a [fundraising] strategy yet,” he said. “A similar-sized fund would be ideal.”
Based in Vancouver with offices in British Columbia and Chicago, Tricor targets mid-market companies in the Western and Mid-Western regions of Canada and the US with enterprise values between $25 million and $250 million. The firm focuses on “expanding Canadian businesses into the US market and US businesses into the Canadian market”.
Tricor has invested more than $500 million in 26 transactions since 2007, according to its website, and has approximately $1.1 billion of capital under management.