McGuireWoods Advises SPX Corp. in Acquiring Carmanah Marine and Aviation Lighting Assets

February 21, 2019

McGuireWoods served as legal adviser to SPX Corp., a supplier of highly engineered products and technologies, in its $77 million acquisition of marine and aviation lighting assets from Carmanah Technologies Corp. This is the fourth transaction the firm has handled for SPX over the past two years.

Carmanah is a publicly traded Canadian company that designs, develops and distributes products focused on energy-optimized LED solutions for infrastructure. The acquisition constitutes substantially all of Carmanah’s assets, which include Carmanah’s marine lighting subsidiaries in Finland, Estonia, the UK, New Zealand and Singapore, and Carmanah’s airfield ground lighting and aviation obstruction lighting businesses.

Charlotte M&A partner David Whelpley led the firm’s multipractice deal team, which included Barlow Mann, Curtis Griner, Robin Vance, Emily Voorheis, Gerald V. Thomas II, Jon Neal, Ronald Fouse and Karlee Blank.

“This deal significantly enhances SPX’s position as a leader in the marine lighting, airfield ground lighting and aviation obstruction lighting business,” Whelpley said. “We are honored that SPX has again chosen McGuireWoods to assist in closing a strategic acquisition.”

McGuireWoods ranked among the top five law firms for U.S. M&A deals and among the top 10 for global mid-market private equity transactions in 2018 league tables published by Bloomberg and Thomson Reuters. The firm also was honored as “Law Firm of the Year” in Mergers & Acquisitions magazine’s Mid-Market M&A Awards.