Chase, Harrowston Team Up in Canada –

NEW YORK/TORONTO – Chase Capital Partners and Canadian buyout firm Harrowston Inc. late last summer added some formality to their working relationship, each agreeing to put up C$100 million ($68.13 million) to invest in the country’s growth-stage private companies, as well as buyouts and recapitalizations.

Having worked together for a decade on several industrial buyouts, Chase and Harrowston will co-invest, source and evaluate deals cooperatively, but each firm will retain control of its own capital, said Chase Principal Tim Walsh.

Harrowston, a publicly traded private equity firm that has been in operation for six years, invests in Canada and the United States. The firm will take advantage of its local presence to find deals and then work with portfolio companies once they get capital from Chase and/or Harrowston, said Harrowston President and Chief Executive Brent Belzberg.

Chase Capital, which is affiliated with The Chase Manhattan Corp., will lend its due diligence capabilities in high technology to the effort, allowing Harrowston to extend its reach beyond the firm’s traditional base in industrial companies, Belzberg said. There is no specific timeline for investing the money, and there is no explicit industry or geographical focus for the cooperative effort.

“This is about doing more together than either one of use could do separately,” Walsh noted.