The British Columbia Investment Management Corp. hopes to become the country's largest owner of manufactured communities with a $489-million takeover bid for Parkbridge Lifestyle Communities .
Calgary-based Parkbridge owns and operates land-lease communities. They rent a homeowner a plot of land, and the homeowner places a prefabricated house- or in rare instances a mobile home - on the site. It has more than 80 communities and 22,500 operational and expansion sites in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.
The Victoria-based investment corporation, which manages about $80-billion in assets, offered Parkbridge investors $7.30 a share - a 30 per cent premium over Friday's close of $5.60.
The shares gained about 30 per cent Monday morning on news of the deal.
Executives and board members own about 31 per cent of the outstanding shares, and said they'd vote in favour of the deal. Canaccord Genuity Corp. acted as financial adviser to Parkbridge and CIBC World Markets Inc. acted as financial adviser to British Columbia Investment Management Corp.