EDMONTON, Alberta –

As long as it gains the necessary approvals, Canada’s Carfinco Income Fund will become a corporation at the start of next year, the company revealed Thursday.

Carfinco’s board of trustees approved the proposal that would change the company to a corporation instead of being an income fund.

The conversion must first be green-lighted by the court and adhere to customary commercial conditions before it is undertaken. These conditions include the receipt of regulatory approvals, including from The Toronto Stock Exchange.

Additionally, the conversion has to be approved by at least a two-thirds vote when Carfinco’s unit-holders meet on Nov. 21. Unit-holders will be mailed a management information circular and proxy statement detailing the conversion by October’s end.

The information will also be found at www.sedar.com.

Should all those approvals go through, the conversion will take place Jan. 1.

Unit-holders would be given one common share of the new corporation on a one-for-one basis for every unit they currently hold. This would be done on a tax-deferred basis.

Carfinco said its entire board and senior management is slated to remain as directors, officer and management after the conversion.

Explaining some of the reasoning for the conversion, officials noted: “On Oct. 31, 2006, the Department of Finance announced the Specified Investment Flow-Through rules ("SIFT Rules") which, through subsequent legislation, changed the manner in which publicly traded income trusts and their distributions are taxed.

“The SIFT Rules became applicable to the Fund in 2011. The SIFT Rules also allow for a trust’s conversion to a corporation to be effected on a tax deferred basis, if completed prior to 2013,” they continued. “As a result of these changes, as well as, the opportunities to advance its long-term strategic plan, the Fund believes that it is in its best interests to convert to a corporation.”

Carfinco then listed other benefits of the conversion, which it contends will give the company a “corporate structure that is recognizable and consistent with other public entities, given the diminishing significance of the public business income trust market” and a “simplified tax and legal structure, more comparable to the majority of public companies operating in Canada.”