This year started off with a bang with Deloitte heralding 1Q10 as a “record quarter” in terms of deals done (180 vs the previous high of 165 in 4Q09). But only $35M of the $1.9B raised was by Canadian companies. That’s a shockingly small amount of finance for such a burgeoning sector.
With that as a backdrop, it’s interesting to see CIBC announce this week that they have built a new cleantech specific team that will be offering a range of services to the cleantech sector. Related to this I saw this morning that RBC Capital has just funded the Greenscape Capital team (sponsors of Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room exercise here in Vancouver back in March). This will let the Greenscape team execute on their plan to build the world’s “greenest parking facility.”
Congrats to CIBC for finally doing what the European banks have been doing for years and to RBC/Greenscape for continuing to move things forward on large scale efficient buildings.
