Production Equipment Rental Co. Purchased by Private Equity Firm

August 23, 2006 • Production Equipment Rental Co., Port Coquitlam, British Columbia, one of the leading lifting equipment rental, sales, and service companies in the Vancouver area, has been acquired by private equity firm WesternOne Equity Income Fund, Vancouver, British Columbia. The $28 million all-cash acquisition was completed on August 14.

Production Equipment Rental was started in 1998 by principles Joe Geraghty, Aaron Silverman, Kit Williams, and Colin Franklin to supply television and movie production companies in Vancouver. The company was the exclusive dealer for JLG-Gradall, and also rented and sold Genie and JLG brands. According to Geraghty, “None of the principles will remain active in the ongoing management.”

WesternOne was established to seek out and acquire predominately privately owned businesses in the Western Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. "The acquisition of Production Equipment's business has provided us with an excellent first step to execute the business objectives of WesternOne," said Darren Latoski, WesternOne's Chief Executive Officer.

In order to purchase Production Equipment Rental Co., WesternOne publicly offered and sold 4.57 million trust units priced at $3.50 per unit and 100,000 convertible trust debentures priced at $100 each for total gross proceeds of $26 million. Essentially, WesternOne paid off all the outstanding debts of Production Equipment Rental, and the sellers did not take any notes or securities as a part of the purchase consideration. The initial public offering was sold by a syndicate of agents co-led by Blackmont Capital, Inc. and Dundee Securities Corp. and included Sora Group Wealth Advisors.