Canada's biggest food retailer, Loblaw Co Ltd, announced that its real estate investment trust raised about Can$400 million in an initial public offering.

The Choice Properties Real Estate Investment Trust was able to sell 40 million units at Can$10 for every unit. The units were launched lower than their proposed price at Can$9.95 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The units were highly traded on the exchange. This resulted to greater than 2 million units altering hands by 1010ET on Friday.

The REIT also obtained Can$600 million equivalent to US$570.8 million. This was because of the production of senior debentures. Furthermore, it finalized a Can$200 million offering to George Weston Ltd, Loblaw's largest stockholder.

Loblaw admitted that it wanted to spin off properties worth higher than Can$7 billion into a REIT. It also planned selling units of the trust through an IPO in July.

On Friday, the company said it sold a tranche of 425 assets to the REIT for approximately Can$7 billion.

Choice Properties currently intends to make monthly cash allocation of Can$0.054167 for each unit.