Joe McDonald

An associate in Gowling WLG’s Toronto office, Joe McDonald maintains a transactional-based practice, with a focus on private mergers and acquisitions (M&A), corporate finance, and private equity fund formation and investments. He regularly advises institutional investors, venture capital funds in Canada and the United States, and strategic purchasers across a number of industries. Joe also provides general counsel services to a number of clients.

Joe’s experience includes the following transactional and advisory work:

• Merger and acquisition transactions for both public and private companies (by way of plans of arrangement, share acquisitions, take-over bids, reverse take-overs, asset purchases and sales, and insolvency bid processes).
• Public offerings of equity and debt, initial public offerings, short form and long form prospectus offerings, exempt market offerings, as well as other public and private equity and debt offerings.
• Advising on fund formation, review of investment documentation, and negotiation and preparation of side letters.
• Advising on stock exchange listing and exchange compliance matters, corporate governance (including special committee) matters, and regulatory compliance matters.
• Advising on general corporate and commercial agreements, including joint venture agreements, limited partnership agreements, and shareholder agreements.

His strategic approach to business law is informed by his time spent on secondment at two of the firm’s major clients—a global automotive corporation and a leading international engineering and electronics company—where he provided support on critical business issues including energy management, technology commercialization, data privacy, and autonomous vehicle innovations.

Joe co-leads the firm’s “AutoTech” sub-group and has developed expertise in the entire EV supply chain, from critical minerals and batteries to trade and public infrastructure. With a background as a Senior Policy Analyst in the federal and provincial public service, Joe also has a deep understanding of the legislative and regulatory context generally. 

In law school, Joe served as Executive Editor of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal.