Corporate governance - Vigil

Les recherches de l'Institut sur la gouvernance des organisations privées et publiques, I'IGOPP, soulignent que la diversité au sein des conseils d'administration et des équipes dirigeantes favorise l'innovation, la prise de décision éclairée et la compétitivité. 
L'IGOPP montre que les entreprises diversifiées sont plus performantes et mieux positionnées à l'international. Miser sur l'intégration des cohortes étudiantes internationales dans les équipes et conseils d'administration est un levier stratégique pour attirer et retenir des talents hautement qualifiés tout en renforçant sa compétitivité.

Peter Thiel-backed crypto exchange Bullish has confidentially filed for an IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in recent weeks, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday. A unit of blockchain software company Block.one, Bullish had attempted to go public through a special purpose acquisition company deal in 2021 but that fell through in 2022 amid a regulatory crackdown and a sudden rise in interest rates that rattled the equities market. The Trump administration, in contrast to predecessor Joe Biden's, has taken a softer stance on crypto regulation and backed the industry’s policy priorities, with the SEC dropping several investigations. Bullish is seeking to capitalise on renewed investor interest in digital assets under the current administration, the FT said.

Global investors have moved money from U.S. equities and into European and emerging markets assets, as concerns mount over U.S. fiscal policy, rising debt and the risk that trade tariffs will trigger a recession. Equity mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, or ETFs, domiciled in the United States saw outflows of $24.7 billion in May, the largest in a year, data from LSEG Lipper showed. By contrast, European funds attracted $21 billion in May, lifting year-to-date inflows to $82.5 billion, the highest in four years. Data for 292 emerging market equity ETFs showed inflows of $3.6 billion last month, bringing total inflows this year to $11.1 billion.

U.S. and Chinese officials said on Tuesday they had agreed on a framework to get their trade truce back on track and remove China’s export restrictions on rare earths while offering little sign of a durable resolution to long-standing trade tensions. At the end of two days of intense negotiations in London, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told reporters the framework deal puts “meat on the bones” of an agreement reached last month in Geneva to ease bilateral retaliatory tariffs that had reached crushing triple-digit levels. But the Geneva deal had faltered over China’s continued curbs on critical minerals exports, prompting the Trump administration to respond with export controls of its own preventing shipments of semiconductor design software, aircraft and other goods to China.

Une cour d’appel fédérale a décidé mardi que les droits de douane imposés par le président américain Donald Trump à l’échelle mondiale resteraient en vigueur le temps de la tenue d’une audience, prolongeant ainsi une suspension d’urgence accordée après qu’une juridiction inférieure a jugé ces droits de douane illégaux. La Cour d’appel fédérale des États-Unis a estimé qu’« une suspension est justifiée dans les circonstances ». Il s’agit d’une victoire temporaire pour l’administration Trump, qui se heurte aux premiers obstacles juridiques à la réorientation du commerce mondial. « L’administration Trump utilise légalement les pouvoirs conférés à l’exécutif par la Constitution et le Congrès pour faire face aux urgences nationales que sont les déficits commerciaux persistants et le trafic de drogue dans notre pays », a réagi mardi par courriel le porte-parole de la Maison-Blanche, Kush Desai.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday trade talks with China were going well as the two sides met for a second day in London, seeking a breakthrough on export controls that have threatened a fresh rupture between the superpowers. U.S. and Chinese officials are trying to get back on track after Washington accused Beijing of blocking exports of rare earth minerals that are critical to its economy, straining ties after they struck a preliminary deal in Geneva last month to step back from a full-blown trade embargo. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said on Monday that the U.S. was ready to agree to lift export controls on some semiconductors in return for China speeding up the delivery of rare earths and magnets.

Activist hedge fund Parvus Asset Management is building a stake in Novo Nordisk amid investor concerns that the Danish drugmaker has lost its first-mover advantage in the lucrative weight-loss drug market, the Financial Times reported on Monday.
The London-based fund, which has earlier targeted budget airline Ryanair and Italian bank UniCredit wants to influence the appointment of Novo Nordisk's new CEO, the report said, citing people with knowledge of the details. Novo told Reuters in an email that it does not "have anything to add." Parvus did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In May, the company announced its CEO Lars Fruergaard Jorgensen would step down after shares plunged from a record-high in June last year as competition, particularly from U.S. rival Eli Lilly makes inroads into Novo's market share, while its pipeline of new drugs has failed to impress investors.

The World Bank on Tuesday slashed its global growth forecast for 2025 by 0.4 percentage point to 2.3%, saying that higher tariffs and heightened uncertainty posed a "significant headwind" for nearly all economies. In its twice-yearly Global Economic Prospects report, the bank lowered its forecasts for nearly 70% of all economies - including the United States, China and Europe, as well as six emerging market regions - from the levels it projected just six months ago before U.S. President Donald Trump took office. Trump has upended global trade with a series of on-again, off-again tariff hikes that have increased the effective U.S. tariff rate from below 3% to the mid-teens - its highest level in almost a century - and triggered retaliation by China and other countries.

Canadian waste management giant GFL Environmental Ltd. is in talks to sell a stake in its infrastructure arm, GIP, in a deal that would value GIP’s equity around $3.3-billion, according to someone familiar with the situation. GIP stands for Green Infrastructure Partners and was spun out of the waste management company in early 2022. GIP’s services include demolition, excavation and remediation, and the company bulked up by purchasing Coco Paving, a family business run by siblings Jenny and Rock-Anthony Coco that predominately operates in Ontario. GIP was created with financing from private equity firm HPS Investment Partners, which took a 47 per cent stake, while GFL kept 45 per cent and GFL founder Patrick Dovigi owned eight per cent.

Michael Sabia, former head of Quebec’s powerful pension fund and current chief executive officer of Hydro‑Québec, warns Canada has long lacked the willpower and ambitious thinking needed to spur national projects, and he believes this must change fast in order to transform the country’s economy. “We have an ambition deficit,” he said on stage Monday at Intersect 2025, The Globe and Mail’s conference designed to foster conversation around building a stronger Canada. Fixing the economy, he argued, will involve condensing layers of regulation that discourage foreign investment and changing how businesses and governments partner with Indigenous communities. He also said Canada must find a new source of capital for getting these projects up and running, because a lot of long-term capital, such as pension funds, typically avoid riskier early-stage ideas.

The CEO of the Canadian subsidiary of China’s largest bank was fired after clashes with officials in Beijing over his efforts to spearhead compliance with federal regulations and laws aimed at preventing foreign interference in domestic financial institutions, according to a lawsuit. Filed by the former executive in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, the legal action offers a rare glimpse inside a subsidiary of the world’s largest bank, a Chinese state-controlled financial institution that holds roughly US$6-trillion in global assets. The subsidiary, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, known internally as ICBK, holds a fraction of that at $3.02-billion. But the court filing sheds light on how the Canadian bank’s senior executives and directors interact with ICBC’s leadership in China.

L’Institut canadien de la sécurité de l’intelligence artificielle (ICSIA) financera des projets de recherche axés sur la désinformation, l’intelligence artificielle générative et la sécurité des systèmes autonomes. L’Institut a indiqué que les 10 premiers projets recevront chacun 100 000 $ de son programme de recherche. Parmi ceux-ci figure une initiative dirigée par Yoshua Bengio, pionnier de l’intelligence artificielle (IA) et professeur titulaire à l’Université de Montréal, qui examinera les raisons cachées qui motivent les décisions prises par les grands modèles de langage, un type d’IA générative axée sur le texte. Catherine Régis, codirectrice du programme de recherche de l’Institut, a déclaré que la sécurité de l’IA est un domaine nouveau.

Le président américain Donald Trump s’est félicité mercredi de l’accord de principe trouvé dans la nuit à Londres entre Washington et Pékin et qui devrait, assure-t-il, permettre la fourniture de terres rares aux États-Unis, louant une relation « excellente » entre les deux pays. « Un accord avec la Chine a été trouvé, soumis à une approbation finale du président Xi et moi-même », a écrit sur son réseau social Truth le président américain, « les terres rares nécessaires seront fournies ». Du côté américain « nous allons respecter notre part, notamment en permettant aux étudiants chinois de venir dans nos universités », a-t-il ajouté.

Private equity firms KKR and Stonepeak Partners raised their offer for Britain's Assura on Wednesday to almost 1.7 billion pounds ($2.3 billion), topping a rival bid with their "best and final" offer for the healthcare real estate investor. The 52.1 pence a share offer, including dividends, trumps the 51.7 pence proposed by rival suitor Primary Health Properties last month. It represents a more than 39% premium to Assura's closing price on February 13, the day before KKR and Stonepeak's first approach. The stock has soared 32% since then, giving Assura a market capitalization of 1.6 billion pounds as of Tuesday.

Montreal-based WSP Global WSP-T said on Wednesday that it would acquire British environmental and engineering consulting firm Ricardo for about £363.1-million ($670-million) including debt. Under the deal, Ricardo shareholders will receive 430 pence in cash per share, a 28.4 per cent premium to its closing price on June 10. The British company had been under pressure from rival and investor Science Group, who had been pushing for a sale or breakup of Ricardo amid calls to oust chairman Mark Clare and other directors, citing underperformance and structural inefficiencies. Science Group, Ricardo’s second-largest investor with a 21.76 per cent stake according to LSEG data, said on Wednesday it would sell a 20 per cent stake to WSP for about £53.5-million.

Recently tabled legislation to legally lock in supply management rules on egg, dairy and chicken imports to protect those sectors has reignited friction among Canada’s farmers about how it could affect trade negotiations. Imports of poultry, egg and dairy products are limited to certain quotas, before they are subject to steep tariffs. If passed as proposed, the bill would prohibit increasing the quotas or reducing the tariffs imposed by Canada on imports that exceed that quantity. The private member’s bill, put forward on May 29 by the Bloc Québécois, is the third such iteration from the party.

Deux jours après avoir annoncé le retour au travail d’employés mis à pied le mois dernier, le développeur québécois de logiciels d’aide à la conduite LeddarTech cesse à nouveau ses activités et annonce le licenciement de la plupart du personnel. Le conseil d’administration continue d’examiner la vente de l’entreprise ou de certains actifs, une dissolution ordonnée, une restructuration, et des procédures d’insolvabilité. En attendant, LeddarTech ne prévoit pas reprendre ses activités et met en garde les investisseurs du risque « important » que les actionnaires et porteurs de titres reçoivent peu, voire aucune valeur dans le cadre d’un processus de faillite et d’insolvabilité.

The Canada Infrastructure Bank is investing $108.3-million to support the construction of a new wind farm in Quebec’s Gaspésie-Îles-de-la Madeleine region, its latest move to back projects involving Indigenous communities ahead of an explosion of spending on power generation and transmission lines in the years to come. The federal government’s $35-billion financing arm, established in 2017 to push a catching up on years of underfunding in infrastructure, said Tuesday it will lend $92.5-million for the construction of a 102.2-megawatt wind farm in the region and another $15.8-million to help Mi’gmaq communities acquire an ownership stake in the project. The balance of the funding for the wind farm will come from loans and credit provided by Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Desjardins and National Bank of Canada.

The truck divisions of Japan’s Toyota and Daimler of Germany have agreed to merge to form “a new strong Japanese truck powerhouse” to work together in vehicle development, procurement and production. Details, including the scope and specifics of the collaboration, were still undecided. But Hino Motors and Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corp. plan to form a listed holding company by April 2026, the companies said Tuesday. A tentative such deal was announced two years ago. Under the integration, which will be “on an equal footing,” Daimler Truck and Toyota Motor Corp. will each own 25% of the holding company. The Tokyo-based holding company will own 100% of Mitsubishi Fuso and Hino, and list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The chief executive will be Karl Deppen, now CEO of Mitsubishi Fuso, a division of Daimler Truck AG.

Potential bidders for Macquarie Asset Management's South Korean industrial gas firm DIG Airgas include investment firm KKR & Co, Brookfield Asset Management, and French gas supplier Air Liquid, in a deal that could fetch up to $3.6 billion, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. Macquarie has hired Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan to run the sale and is expecting non-binding bids this month, the sources said, declining to be named as the information is not public. DIG Airgas, South Korea's third-largest industrial gas producer, has also attracted interest from infrastructure funds including I Squared Capital and Stonepeak, and U.S.-based global gas and chemical firm Air Products said the sources.

Insurance broker Brown & Brown will buy Risk Strategies parent and rival Accession Risk Management in a US$9.83 billion deal, the companies announced on Tuesday, bolstering its capabilities in property and casualty and employee benefits. The deal adds to a handful of mega transactions in the highly fragmented insurance broker industry in recent years, as top firms look to increase scale and boost their competitive position. Last year, Aon acquired NFP for $13 billion, while Marsh McLennan bought McGriff Insurance Services for $7.75 billion. Arthur J. Gallagher’s $13.45 billion deal for AssuredPartners is expected to close later this year. Shares of Brown & Brown were down 4.5% in premarket trading. Risk Strategies was founded in 1997 by insurance industry veteran Mike Christian. Boston, Massachusetts-based Accession was formed in 2023 to house Risk Strategies and insurance wholesaler One80 Intermediaries.

For the first time in more than a decade, Ontario has issued a U.S.-dollar bond without the assistance of any U.S.-based banks. The province sold US$2-billion worth of 10-year bonds last week with the help of British banking giant Barclays PLC, according to Bloomberg data. Three Canadian banks also helped manage the latest provincial debt issue: BMO Capital Markets, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Bank of Nova Scotia. American banks have participated in every Ontario government U.S.-dollar bond sale since 2011, the data show. As recently as January of this year, the province sold US$3-billion worth of five-year bonds with the help of Bank of America Corp. Ontario Premier Doug Ford had previously committed to banning U.S. companies from government contracts in response to the continental trade war launched earlier this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Canada’s outdated innovation policies are causing a loss of economic sovereignty amid critical shifts in global trade relations and the knowledge-based economy, experts say. While Canada continues to lead globally in education and research, innovation experts say the country’s inability to plan past that phase is costing it hundreds of billions of dollars every year in data and intellectual property ownership. And with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement up for review in 2026, they argue the federal government should arrive at negotiations with a Canada-first approach. Speaking Monday at the Intersect conference at the Fairmont Royal York hotel in Toronto, Jim Balsillie, former co-CEO of Research In Motion Ltd., said Canada needs to have an offensive strategy heading into USMCA negotiations.

Le Bloc québécois réclame que le gouvernement libéral de Mark Carney scinde son projet de loi C-5 afin de pouvoir étudier séparément le volet sur les barrières interprovinciales, qui pourrait faire consensus, de celui sur les grands projets que le cabinet fédéral juge d’intérêt national et pour lequel on ne peut pas en dire autant. Dans une lettre transmise lundi au leader du gouvernement à la Chambre des communes, Steven MacKinnon, la leader parlementaire bloquiste, Christine Normandin, explique qu’une telle approche permettrait de faire « cheminer plus rapidement » la section qui traite du commerce et la main-d’œuvre. « En revanche, sous sa forme actuelle, le volet de C-5 que votre gouvernement intitule Loi visant à bâtir le Canada risque de freiner l’adoption d’autres mesures pourtant importantes dans le contexte actuel d’incertitude économique », prévient Mme Normandin.