Chesswood Group Acquires Blue Chip Leasing



Chesswood Group announced it entered into an agreement to acquire Blue Chip Leasing and EcoHome Financial. The acquisition is expected to enhance Chesswood’s financial and operational strength and growth prospects in several important ways:

  • Establishes a North American Platform. Allows Chesswood to leverage product and target market expertise in both Canada and the U.S.
  • Enhances Scale. Significant scale is gained, with a pro forma portfolio of net finance receivables of $315 million as of September 30, 2014.

  • Financially Attractive with Strong Cash Flows. The proposed acquisition is expected to be high single-digit accretive to earnings per share in the first full year of operations. This accretion and the enhanced growth opportunities are expected to deliver strong free cash flows and support Chesswood’s track record of paying and growing dividends.
  • Management Team Fully Aligned and Incentivized. The acquisition adds management with almost two decades of experience. Daniel Wittlin (CEO of Blue Chip and EcoHome) and Ed Dias (President of EcoHome) will be entering into multi-year employment agreements. In addition, Wittlin will join the board of Chesswood and will be assuming the role of Chesswood’s COO. Both Wittlin and Dias will be indirectly acquiring a significant number of Chesswood shares as part of the transaction, which will be subject to multi-year escrow arrangements. The purchase agreement for these acquisitions also includes significant incentives tied to performance of Blue Chip and EcoHome over the next several years.

“We are tremendously excited by the critical mass and breadth of programs this transaction provides Chesswood” said Barry Shafran, Chesswood’s president and CEO. “Blue Chip brings years of experience in the prime equipment finance space and a pattern of growing profitability to Chesswood, which will allow us to have a complete product offering to the commercial equipment finance industry” added Shafran.

Blue Chip is a tenured, prime, small ticket equipment finance company serving brokers and vendors from coast-to-coast in Canada. Blue Chip has almost two decades of experience in the Canadian commercial leasing industry, and had net finance receivables of $74 million as of September 30, 2014.


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