Court approves consolidation

ST. AUGUSTIN, Quebec--After battling a financial war with its creditors for most of 2004, Microtec Enterprises found some solace through the court in mid-March as the company got the okay to combine its assets with Securex Master Limited Partnership into an income trust called the First National AlarmCap Fund. The fund combines 100,000 Microtec subscribers with 18,000 Securex subscribers and completes the first step of Microtec's restructuring plan. According to Daniel Tardif, communications director at Microtec, the company's payments to creditor GE Capital are complete and the Superior Court's approval of the asset deal was the first step toward building the company's business back up. "The deal brings our two services together," Tardiff said. "But also to our larger clients, now we can service them from east to west." Tardif also said the combination of the two companies--Microtec, a full-service security provider here and Securex, a financial provider to the alarm industry--is about seeing what the two companies can do together. Combined, the two offer not only extended services, but also three monitoring centers across the country. Tardif said the company struggled to find balance during its tenure of high debt, which it acquired during the mass marketing age of the 1990s. Now the company has new cash available to it, allowing it to come out from under the shadow of credit extensions and the Canada's Creditors Companies Arrangement Act. "Now the company is on good terms," said Tardif.