100 King St W, Suite 1600, 1 First Cdn Pl, Toronto, ON
Year called to bar: 1999 (ON)
Leader of Gowling WLG’s Structured Finance and Securitization Group, Toronto-based partner Jason Kroft brings over 25 years’ experience servicing his Canadian and international business clients. He helps a diverse client base – including banks, investment and pension funds, governments and high-net-worth individuals – navigate an array of unique and complex transactions, including in the context of public and private asset securitizations; investment funds; derivatives products and instruments; specialized finance transactions; energy, commodity and mining products and transactions; banking and secured finance. Jason, with a view to emerging areas such as carbon finance and ESG, leads efforts in emissions trading, green bonds and sustainable-linked notes. He routinely counsels a range of carbon market participants, including project developers, lenders and traders and collaborates with boards of directors, C-suite executives and risk management teams to develop and implement strategies addressing challenges and opportunities related to ESG and carbon finance. Jason has been recognized in The Lexpert/American Lawyer Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada and TheBest Lawyers in Canada, which named him the 2024 Derivatives Law “Lawyer of the Year” award winner in Toronto.
On March 31, 2017, J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC (“J.C. Flowers”) and Värde Partners completed the acquisition of CitiFinancial Canada (now Fairstone Financial Inc. (“Fairstone”)) from an affiliate of Citigroup Inc. (“Citi”).
On June 24, 2015, MBARC Credit Canada Inc. (MBARC), an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Daimler AG and a direct wholly owned subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz Financial Services Canada Corporation (MBFSC), completed an offering of $424,200,000 of asset-backed notes collateralized by a pool of over 13,500 Canadian retail auto lease contracts and the related new and used vehicles.
Essar Steel Algoma Inc. (Algoma) concluded its comprehensive US$1.4 billion recapitalization and refinancing. Algoma restructured certain of its existing debt obligations by way of a plan of arrangement under the CBCA and refinanced its outstanding debt through concurrent Term Loan, ABL, High Yield Debt and Junior Notes financings.
Element Financial Corporation acquired the assets and operations of PHH Arval, PHH Corporation's North American fleet management services business, for a purchase price of US$1.4 billion in cash. Element also assumed PHH's obligations under the PHH fleet securitization programs in the US and Canada.
