Richards Packaging Income Fund completes C$85.7 million initial public offering in Canada

Torys acted as Canadian and U.S. counsel to the Fund on the offering and to Richards Packaging Inc. on the credit facility with a team in Canada that included Philip Brown, Darren Sukonick, Adam Armstrong, David Boyko and Margaret Forbes (corporate and securities), Adam Delean, Tom Zverina and Helgi Maki (banking) and John Unger and Ann Marie McGovern (tax). The Torys team in New York included Brad Cost (banking), Darren Baccus (securities) and Jeff Scheine and Gregg Benson (tax).

On April 7, 2004, Richards Packaging Income Fund (TSX: RPI.UN) completed its initial public offering through an underwriting of 8,569,913 trust units for total gross proceeds of C$85,699,130. Richards Packaging Income Fund used the proceeds of the offering, together with US$18.2 million borrowed under a credit facility, to indirectly acquire Richards Packaging Inc., which had been acquired in November 2002 by a group led by Richards Packaging's current CEO and with financing led by EdgeStone Capital Partners. Richards Packaging is a full-service rigid packaging distributor serving the North American food, wine and spirits, cosmetic, specialty chemical, pharmaceutical and other industries. The Fund's IPO was conducted as a public offering in Canada through a syndicate of underwriters led by CIBC World Markets Inc. and National Bank Financial Inc. and including RBC Dominion Securities Inc., TD Securities Inc., GMP Securities Ltd., Scotia Capital Inc. and Westwind Partners Inc.