Lexpert magazine features articles and columns on developments in legal practice management, deals and lawsuits of interest in Canada, the law and business issues of interest to legal professionals and businesses that purchase legal services.
Issue link: https://digital.carswellmedia.com/i/1518995
22 www.lexpert.ca Canadian Law Awards Canadian Law Awards CHALLENGES ARE opportunities to ex- cel. With M&A activity in Canada relatively steady in 2022, as evidenced by more than $388 billion in total value of 3,432 deals seen in the full year and $70.9 billion in its busi- est month, dealmakers had hope for a similar growth in 2023 despite lingering uncertain- ties over economic conditions. Some prognosticators were not as optimis- tic, with many warning that the country would see a recession deeper than most advanced economies for much of the year due to con- tinuing geopolitical tensions, rising inflation, higher interest rates, tighter credit markets, and significantly reduced access to capital. e predictions were not far off, with 2023 resulting in real domestic growth of 1.1 per- cent and the economy narrowly avoiding a technical recession. While the GDP statistics outpace the 0.8 percent estimate of analysts, 2023 is still marked as the slowest year of ex- pansion since 2016, outside of the height of COVID-19 in 2020. Still, Canada remains home to attractive LEXPERT'S 2024 AWARDS OF EXCELLENCE FOR TOP DEALS THESE 22 DEALS, COMPILED BY KIEZZSA CRUZ AND MA. CARLEEN BONGAT AND SELECTED BY LEXPERT'S EDITORIAL AND RESEARCH TEAMS, SHOW HOW LAW FIRMS AND BUSINESSES REMAINED ACTIVE AMID ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY assets and resilient dealmakers, and those named Excellence Awardees prove that M&A in Canada can rise above even the trickiest of situations. is year, Lexpert has named 22 deals in five categories (capital markets, infrastructure and project financing, insolvency and restructur- ing, mid-market deals, and overall M&A deal of the year) as Excellence Awardees, picked from dozens of submissions sent by legal pro- fessionals across Canada. e next step is for the shortlisted Excel- lence Awardee deals to go to a panel of judges to choose a final winner in each category. We will then honour our Excellence Awardees and announce a winner in each deal catego- ry (along with our awards for non-deal cat- egories) at an in-person gala on May 9 at the Liberty Grand in Toronto. It's the third in- person event for the CLA since Lexpert cre- ated the awards in 2020 (when COVID-19 temporarily stopped face-to-face mingling). Here are this year's Excellence Awardees. Good luck to all. Coming up with this year's Excellence Awardees involved a rigorous, expert-in- formed process. The Canadian Law Awards editorial and research teams reviewed all the submissions and con- sulted third-party information to iden- tify each category's standouts. A large, independent external judging panel will judge these shortlisted submissions, scoring them against these criteria: the financial value of the deal; the degree to which it advanced legal and finan- cial techniques and structures; how it spanned jurisdictions, practice areas, and industries; and whether the deal involved groundbreaking original legal strategies and structures. Through an aggregation of the judges' scoring, a process independently verified through an audit by PwC, a final winner will be chosen from each category. Winners will be announced during an in-person event set for May 9.