I played in the Canton Cup Soccer tournament as a kid.
Last year I brought my oldest and stood on the sideline in 75-degree sunshine thinking — this is exactly what I remembered. Warm, nostalgic, perfect.
This year all three of my kids played in the tournament.
We didn’t see the sun for two straight days.
Rained on all weekend. Cold, wet, muddy sidelines from start to finish.
Didn’t matter.
I can honestly say there’s not much I enjoy more than watching my kids play soccer. Rain or shine, I’m not missing it.
And two of the three teams brought home championships, which made the wet socks very much worth it.
Some weekends you just can’t plan for. You show up, deal with whatever the weather gives you, and you stay until the final whistle.
Nine months ago I took on a deal that felt a lot like that.
A large greenhouse acquisition and expansion in Southwestern Ontario — structured as a share purchase, with a construction component layered on top.
Share purchases add complexity that most lenders aren’t built to handle. We knew that going in.
We chose the lender carefully — one I had worked with many times before in the greenhouse space, every time without a hitch. Active in this market. Understood the industry.
We had the right conversations with the right people all the way through.
And then the file hit the credit group.
The credit group reduced the LTV and added covenants that hadn’t been part of the original deal terms that were communicated to us. In the time between the discussion paper and the final commitment, the deal changed. Not because the deal got worse. Not because we missed anything. But because that’s how institutional lending works — the relationship team and the credit team are not always the same conversation.
The reduced LTV forced us to refinance other assets and renegotiate the structure with the seller. All of it on a compressed timeline, with lawyers, appraisers, contractors, engineers, and accountants who all needed to keep moving in the same direction.
The lender couldn’t have been more apologetic. They said it had never happened this late in a deal before. And I believe them. This isn’t a lender I’d steer anyone away from — they’re one of the most active and capable players in the greenhouse space. But it could have happened with any lender.
Credit appetites change. Markets shift. Underwriting standards tighten.
Sometimes all of it happens mid-file.
A deal is never done until it closes.
What saved this one wasn’t luck. It was having the right structure in place to absorb the changes, the right professionals at the table, and the persistence to keep pushing when it would have been easier to walk away.
Complex deals don’t fail because the opportunity isn’t real. They fail because someone gives up when it gets hard.
Until next week,
Vince
P.S. Two out of three teams brought home championships. The third one played great. Some weekends the rain wins. This one, we did
