Corporate governance - Vigil

The Bank of England said it was looking more closely at how it might cut interest rates below zero as Britain’s economy faces a triple whammy of rising COVID-19 cases, higher unemployment and a possible new Brexit shock.

The Asia-Pacific region risks a damaging financial crisis from a surge of non-performing loans caused by rising insolvencies, a senior official from the World Bank Group’s private sector arm said on Thursday.

Elon Musk is hailed as an innovator and disruptor who went from knowing next to nothing about building cars to running the world’s most valuable automaker in the space of 16 years.

Montreal payments-processing company Nuvei Corp. has priced its initial public offering at US$26 a share, well in excess of its original goal, in advance of its debut on the Toronto Stock Exchange in the next few days.

“I don’t believe BlackRock will be ever 100% back in office,” he said Thursday at the Morningstar Investment Conference. “I actually believe maybe 60% or 70%, and maybe that’s a rotation of people. But I don’t believe we’ll ever have a full, you know, cadre of people in office,” he said.

Canada’s annual inflation rate remained at 0.1 per cent in August as rising food prices were offset by lower gasoline costs, Statistics Canada said on Wednesday, underlining how much damage the coronavirus outbreak has done.

China’s ByteDance Ltd. would retain a majority ownership stake in its TikTok app unit as part of a proposal being reviewed by national-security regulators, with an eye toward settling the high-profile deal by a deadline Sunday, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Canadian trucking company TFI International Inc. is pushing further into the United States with the purchase of R.R. Donnelley & Sons business unit DLS Worldwide, its eighth acquisition in roughly eight months.

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce executive Deepak Khandelwal is leaving the bank next month, three years after CIBC paid a steep price to poach him from the telecommunications sector.

External consultants are helping UBS create a potential merger deal between the two largest Swiss banks, Credit Suisse and UBS.
It would be the biggest deal since UBS merged with Basler Bankverein in 1997.

Weddings, housewarming parties, birthday celebrations and family get-togethers are all contributing to a worrisome spike in COVID-19 cases in Ontario, spurring the province’s Premier to promise stricter limits on large gatherings in coronavirus hot spots.

Ryanair shareholders backed a 458,000 euro ($540,000) bonus for Group CEO Michael O’Leary on Thursday, although more than a third withheld their support following criticism of the payout at a time of industry crisis.

The European Central Bank on Thursday gave euro zone banks relief worth 73 billion euros (66.46 billion pounds) from a key capital requirement in order to help them keep credit flowing amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Japan’s government contacted several foreign shareholders in Toshiba Corp ahead of the conglomerate’s annual meeting, three people familiar with the matter said, in what at least one investor saw as an attempt to influence voting.

A takeover battle for Cogeco Inc. and its subsidiary Cogeco Communications Inc. has grown increasingly hostile, with both sides accusing the other of flouting corporate governance rules.

While that might be true, Couche-Tard is “not totally immune” from outside pressure, said François Dauphin, chief executive of Montreal’s Institute for Governance of Private and Public Organizations. Even if its size limits the number of companies that could raise the amount of money that would be needed to acquire the company, it’s still a possibility, he said.

Under the revised terms, Alstom will acquire Bombardier Transportation for an enterprise value of US$8.4 billion

Many economists, including myself, believe that it is time to broaden the Bank of Canada’s mandate to include the pursuit of maximum levels of employment or full employment. It’s not a new idea. Australia, the United States and New Zealand have legislated that the mandate of their central banks is both price stability and full employment.

Struggling sports and outdoor retailer MEC is facing objections to its proposed deal to sell the business to an American investment firm, as some of its co-op members say they should have been consulted.