CI Fund Management has cut a series of deals that will make it the second largest mutual fund manager in Canada. The Toronto-based fund firm said this morning that it will purchase Synergy Asset Management for $116 million in cash and stock. The deal is one of two announced this morning by CI Fund and follows a third purchase announced Thursday evening.

Synergy, which was founded in 1997 by CEO Joseph Canavan, manages some C$1.4 billion in 24 funds.

In the second deal announced this morning CI purchased the Canadian operations of the Assante Corporation, a financial planning firm for C$846 million, including C$148 million in cash. The deal covers a network of 1,000 financial advisers in Canada as well as C$7 billion in assets under management. The advisors administer C$17 billion for clients. Meanwhile, Winnipeg-based Assante will spin its US operations off to shareholders.

Sun Life Financial, which already owned a 34 percent stake in CI, purchased 860,652 CI shares for $10.8 million. That purchase was made to provide funds for the Synergy deal. Sun Life also bought 20.1 million shares of CI for $258.3 million to back the Assante deal.

On Thursday evening CI said that it is paying C$32 million deal to acquire Skylon Capital. Skylon is the manager of the VentureLink Funds and manages a total of C$665 million in assets.

When the dust has settled on the deals, CI will rank as the second largest Canadian fund manager behind Investors Group and will manage C$43.8 billion in assets.  

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