Chesswood Group Limited, a publicly traded North American specialty finance company, and Waypoint Investment Partners Inc., a Toronto-based investment fund and private client investment manager, announced Chesswood and its wholly owned subsidiary, Chesswood Capital Management Inc. (CCM), have entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Waypoint.

"The acquisition of Waypoint is an important step in building an integrated asset management platform within the Chesswood Group of Companies," said Ryan Marr, CEO Chesswood Group.

The acquisition of Waypoint provides CCM with an integrated platform to structure and distribute private credit solutions to Canadian investors alongside Waypoint's growing suite of alternative investment funds.

"The team at CCM is excited to work with the management of Waypoint to offer Canadian investors access to Chesswood's diversified loan portfolio in formats designed to offer attractive risk-adjusted returns," said Jeff Fields, CEO of CCM. "The acquisition of Waypoint will provide Chesswood with additional capabilities as we expand our institutional forward flow partnerships and private credit investment offerings."

"The Waypoint team is excited to be joining CCM and we look forward to providing Canadian investors with best-in-class private credit solutions in addition to our existing alternative equity offerings," said Max Torokvei, CEO of Waypoint.

The consideration for the acquisition will be the payment of approximately $1.6 million and the issue of 150,983 Chesswood common shares. The acquisition of Waypoint is expected to close in Q2 following receipt of regulatory approval (including the approval of the Ontario Securities Commission for Chesswood to acquire ownership of a registrant and the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange for the issue and listing of the Chesswood common shares to be issued).

Chesswood’s operating businesses include Pawnee Leasing, Tandem Finance, Blue Chip Leasing Corporation, Vault Credit Corporation and Rifco National Auto Finance.