Here are the top reads in deals and financial services over the past 24 hours,
Canadian venture capital: Ritual Technologies Inc., an online ordering service that speeds up the coffee and lunch-run experience for big-city workers, has raised US$70-million in a financing led by Canadian venture capital firm Georgian Partners, as the Toronto startup looks to expand beyond North America. Story (Sean Silcoff, for subscribers)
Pension fund catches tech bug: OPSEU Pension Trust (OPTrust), which manages $20-billion in assets on behalf of 92,000-plus past and present Ontario government employees, has emerged as an anchor investor in Vancouver venture-capital firm Yaletown Partners’ new Innovation Growth Fund, committing $20-million toward its $200-million fundraising goal. Story (Sean Silcoff, for subscribers)
RBC’s new U.S. leaders: The sudden departure of the man credited with spearheading an ambitious expansion of Royal Bank of Canada’s U.S. investment banking arm puts the broker’s future in the hands of a new crop of leaders. Story (James Bradshaw and Alexandra Posadzki, for subscribers)
FINANCIAL SERVICES WRAP
Charges: Australian authorities have charged the former local bosses of Citigroup Inc and Deutsche Bank AG with “criminal cartel offences” over a $2.3 billion stock issue, one of the country’s biggest cases of alleged white-collar crime. Story
Wealth management: Danny Moses wasn’t afraid to broadcast he’d profited from the 2008 housing crisis, but he’s keeping his latest investment – the burgeoning cannabis industry – closer to the vest. Mr. Moses, who was head trader at FrontPoint Partners under Steve Eisman, as documented in the book and film The Big Short, says the plant’s still federally illegal status has left people like him hesitant to make pot investments public. Story
DEAL WRAP
PCs: Japan’s Sharp Corp. said it will buy Toshiba Corp.’s personal-computer business and issue US$1.8-billion in new shares to buy back preferred stock from banks, highlighting a swift recovery under the control of Foxconn. Story
U.S. venture capital: Add GV to the roster of venture investors getting into the scooter game. Axios reports that the firm formerly known as Google Ventures will lead Lime’s likely $250 million round, which would value them at more than $1 billion post-money. (We first reported that Lime was raising at that valuation.) The Information
WHAT WE’RE READING ELSEWHEREDu
Local venture data: During its Invest Canada 2018 conference, the CVCA announced the launch of CVCA Intelligence, its new investment data portal replacing its original InfoBase. The data portal is powered by Hockeystick, which announced its partnership with the CVCA back in September 2017 to rebuild the platform. Hockeystick as a company is working to building a transparent data hub tracking the Canadian startup ecosystem, having partnered with the Lazaridis Institute for the feat in April 2017. BetaKit
Startup takeout: In one of the biggest acquisitions of a US venture-backed company in the last decade, Microsoft has agreed to pick up GitHub for US$7.5 billion in stock. The deal will add GitHub’s open-source software development platform to the computing giant’s bag of tricks. It will also make GitHub’s biggest shareholders quite wealthy. Story
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