The Dutil family’s Placements CMI joined with Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ for the purchase

Quebec’s Dutil family is buying back the structural steelmaker Canam Group Inc. it helped start 60 years ago with help from Canada’s second-largest pension fund and the province’s labour-backed development fund.
The Dutil family’s Placements CMI joined with Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and the Fonds de solidarité FTQ for the purchase, Canam said in a statement. The deal, which is expected to close in the coming weeks, is valued at around $840 million. The new company will be owned equally by the three Quebec investors.
The deal effectively repatriates Canam from New York-based private equity firm American Industrial Partners (AIP) after it acquired as much as 60 per cent of Canam in 2017 from the family, the pension fund and the development fund for about $875 million including debt.
“With the support of CDPQ and the Fonds, Canam will continue to grow with the same standards of quality and reliability that have made its reputation,” Marcel Dutil, Canam board chairman and son of company co-founder Roger Dutil, said in the statement. “We would like to thank AIP for its support and look forward to continuing our partnership in the United States.”
Saint-Georges, Que.-based Canam, which designs, engineers and builds construction components like girders for large buildings and bridges, has 25 plants in Canada and the U.S. plus engineering offices in Romania and India. It has more than 4,900 workers, it says.
Canam’s U.S. subsidiaries Canam Steel Corp. and FabSouth LLC aren’t part of deal and remain jointly owned by American Industrial Partners, the CDPQ pension fund and the FTQ development fund, Canam said.
Janie Béïque, an executive vice-president at the FTQ fund said: “We are proud to renew our partnership with the Dutil family so that the great adventure of this Québec manufacturing flagship can continue.”
Email: cmcclelland@postmedia.com