The Chesswood Group entered into a definitive agreement to sell its Acura dealership, Acura Sherway, for an aggregate estimated purchase price of approximately $22.0 million.

Chesswood expects to record a gain on the sale of approximately $4 million. The transaction is expected to close during the current fiscal year and is subject to the purchaser obtaining customary consents, including the consent of Honda Canada.

The transaction frees up Chesswood to complete its transformation into a focused North-American specialty finance company, following a number of transactions that began in late 2014, including a new corporate banking facility, the divesting of its legal finance business and the acquisition in March of our Canadian specialty finance businesses.

“This transaction allows Chesswood to be solely focused on the growth and development of our specialty finance companies,” said Barry Shafran, Chesswood’s president and CEO. “We are thankful to our team at Acura Sherway for providing Chesswood with an incredibly consistent level of strong financial performance over the sixteen years we have been together.”

Chesswood’s North American platform now includes Pawnee Leasing and Windset Capital, providers of equipment financing and working capital loans, respectively, to small business in the United States and Blue Chip Leasing and EcoHome Financial, providers of equipment financing to businesses and consumers, respectively, in Canada.

Chesswood’s portfolio consists of more than 35,000 loans and leases with gross receivables of more than $500 million.