Investor Alan Rickard’s entrepreneurial journey began a few years ago with the purchase of one company with a friend/neighbour - and then that led to the acquisition of two other companies.

“He was signing up to kind of run the company and then I would help invest and get the financing. That worked out really well,” he said.

From there a second company was bought with another friend and then the three of them bought a third business.

The first company was Elreg Distributors which they closed on in December 2019 just before the pandemic hit. What followed was Northstar Industries in the fall of 2021 and then Oxford Hydraulics in August of this year.

The companies are based in southern Ontario. Elreg Distribution is in the wholesale starter, alternator, voltage regulator, and component parts distribution business. Northstar Industries is a distributor and fabricator of specialized construction and industrial products. And, Oxford Hydraulics provides “Mission Critical Service” including repairs and maintenance of large industrial, farming, and commercial equipment used in construction, farming, excavation etc.

“When we were looking at that first business, Northstar Industries, in the company there I think they had done some financing, but they were certainly doing their commercial banking with National (Bank of Canada). When I was looking to finance the deal as we were putting it together, I had gone to all the other banks.

“When I was finally talking to the owners they said ‘why don’t you talk to my contact at National) and that’s when Sagar (Sethi) and I connected. The offer and the financing, it seemed like National was a lot more interested in placing money in this sort of space - regional mid-cap space that we call it. The offer was far better, the terms not so much on the rate necessarily they were all kind of the same, but the terms that were there were very good for the type of thing that we were trying to do.”

The purchase of Northstar highlighted a good and easy relationship with National which led to the continuation of that relationship to the purchase of Oxford.

Rickard said National was also involved in the financing of the very first company purchase in Elreg Distributors.

National Bank is one of the major sponsors of the Business Transitions Forum, they are a partner in every BTF event.

Rickard said getting financing in place is certainly one piece of the puzzle in achieving business growth.

“We’re using sort of a leveraged approach of purchasing these small businesses,” he said. “But I will say probably even more so than just getting the approvals are the terms and the conditions that we’re able to work within.

“And that’s what really facilitates growth within these small companies. The flexibility, the tools that are available to us that National’s brought. That’s what’s really been helping to drive some of this growth.

“It’s been a really great relationship. Because of the flexibility that we’ve had, we’ve been able to pay off that debt, the senior debt with the Elreg business, and almost turned around immediately and put up some bigger financing on this Oxford Hydraulics business that we closed on in August. And of course, the flexibility to look at the whole portfolio of what we have. I have a business where I own 50 per cent with one person, 50 per cent with another person, and then we have a third, a third each of this other one. National has been able to look at that and say this is your portfolio of companies, here’s what the financing was. We got really aggressive in being able to do that which was the only way we would have been able to close and purchase a business of this magnitude.”

(Mario Toneguzzi is a veteran of the media industry for more than 40 years and named in 2021 a Top Ten Business Journalist in the world and only Canadian)