Matt Maurer spoke with Marijuana Business Daily on cannabis retail mergers and acquisitions

Matt Maurer, Co-chair of our Cannabis Law Group and Chair of our Franchise Law Group, spoke with Marijuana Business Daily on cannabis retail mergers and acquisitions. 

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Canada’s biggest single market, Ontario, has been well behind the curve in licensing sufficient cannabis stores since legalization and only recently increased the pace of licensing to 40 per month.

Matt Maurer, co-chair of the cannabis practice at Toronto law firm Torkin Manes, has worked on multiple retail acquisition deals.

He noticed increased interest in Ontario store acquisitions after a regulatory moratorium on change of control over store licenses expired in December 2019.

Some stores have been sold before they’ve even opened, he said.

“There’s people who never thought they’d have to wait a year to get an inspection and open and just can’t hold it, or don’t want to hold it for a year, so they’re happy to sell their location,” Maurer said.

“There’s, on the other side, buyers that are happy to look at good locations and buy them from people that are not interested in holding them without revenue for a year at a time.”

Ontario currently has 246 cannabis stores authorized to open.

As licensing finally ramps up in the province of 14.7 million people, Maurer believes some store owners’ concerns may drive new acquisitions.

“And that concern is either, ‘Do I need to get out before there’s too many stores?’ or ‘Do I need to scale up, and give myself a bigger foothold and a bigger advantage before there’s more stores than there are now?'”

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Read the full article on Marijuana Business Daily.