Patricia Olasker is a partner practising corporate finance and securities law, emphasizing cross-border and international corporate finance transactions and mergers and acquisitions, and advising both public corporations and leading U.S. and Canadian investment banks. She has represented issuers and underwriters in some of Canada's most complex and innovative financing transactions, and foreign entities in their acquisitions of Canadian public corporations. She also specializes in public market derivatives, high-yield debt financings and MJDS offerings by Canadian issuers.
Recent M&A transactions include representing Chinese state owned enterprises in their acquisitions of Canadian public companies; representing U.S. minority shareholders of Sears Canada in their successful opposition to a going private transaction initiated by Sears Canada's controlling shareholder; and representing Agnico-Eagle Mines in its successful acquisitions of Swedish public company Riddarhyttan Resources and Canadian gold company Cumberland Resources. From the first financing transaction effected under the Multijurisdictional Disclosure System in 1991 (Rogers Communications Inc.'s offering of Liquid Yield Option Notes), Patricia has acted on numerous high-yield debt financings under MJDS, by way of Rule 144A private placement, and U.S.-only registered offering. She has also assisted investment dealers in the development of structured debt and equity products and public market derivative securities. Patricia advises boards of directors and special committees on corporate governance and transaction-specific matters. She regularly advises Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Agnico-Eagle, Global Alumina, JP Morgan and Lehman Brothers and US hedge funds, Pershing Square, Ramius Capital and others.
Patricia was seconded to the Ontario Securities Commission in 1984-85 as a legal advisor to the Chairman, was a member of the executive committee of the securities law subcommittee of the CBA Business Law Section and served on an advisory committee to the Senate Banking Committee. She was Co-Chair of the Securities Advisory Committee to the OSC.
Patricia is featured in Law Business Research's
International Who's Who of Capital Markets Lawyers, annually in LEXPERT/American Lawyer Media's
Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada in corporate finance and in the
Canadian Legal LEXPERT Directory as a most frequently recommended corporate finance and securities practitioner, a consistently recommended corporate commercial practitioner and a repeatedly recommended mergers and acquisitions practitioner. She is annually cited in Chambers Global's
The World's Leading Lawyers as a leading individual in Canadian Corporate/M&A law and is highly recommended in the
PLC Which Lawyer? Yearbook in the area of equity capital markets. Patricia was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 25 Women Lawyers by
LEXPERT Magazine in 2003.
Patricia is an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto where she teaches an advanced mergers and acquisitions workshop. She is a director and officer of the Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research.
Patricia received an LL.B. from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1977 and studied in the LL.M. programme at the University of California, Berkeley (abt). She joined the firm as a partner in 1998.
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