Corporate governance - Vigil

The tracking capabilities of the Tim Hortons app – which more than one in 10 Canadians use at least once a month – are the subject of legal probes, launched in 2020, that have raised questions about whether the company gathers too much information about its customers through their smartphones.

Gary Ng, the former owner of PI Financial Corp. and a former co-owner of Bridging Finance Inc., has received a $5-million fine and a permanent ban from working in the securities industry after a regulatory panel found he engaged in fraudulent conduct with loans he used to finance the purchase of several investment advisory companies.

During most of the past two years, the costs for transporting shipping containers ballooned as people altered their purchasing behaviour to favour physical goods. Now, consumers are increasingly spending their disposable income on services rather than household items and reacting to climbing interest rates.

Unilever PLC said it would add Nelson Peltz to its board and disclosed his fund now holds a 1.5% stake, moves that ratchet up pressure on the maker of Dove soap and Hellmann’s mayonnaise to reinvigorate growth across its sprawling portfolio.

As Ontario, Canada’s economic engine looks set to keep in office leaders promising to increase spending, its higher debt load compared to other provinces could reduce the appeal of its bonds in an environment where interest rates are rising and its housing market is starting to cool.

Business groups are urging merchants to sign up for a multimillion-dollar class-action settlement with Visa and MasterCard over credit-card processing fees.

A tech billionaire brought down plans by Australia’s biggest polluter to spin off its coal-fired power plants into a new company, handing a big win to environmental activists who want a faster shift toward cleaner energy.

The German car maker, which has a joint venture with China’s biggest automaker SAIC Motor, has since 2013 run a plant in Urumqi, the capital of the western region where Western nations and rights groups say ethnic Uyghurs face torture and detention.

Shares in Ted Baker rose 3.1 per cent on Monday following a report that Juicy Couture owner Authentic Brands is the British fashion chain’s preferred bidder and that the two firms could agree on a £300-million ($379.35-million) deal.

The SPAC boom brought a wave of companies to the public markets promising years of rapid growth and profits to investors. Two years since the boom began, many of these companies are already warning they may go bust.

Four top Coinbase Global Inc. officials have collectively pocketed more than $1 billion by selling shares since the cryptocurrency exchange’s public listing last spring, a period in which the company’s shares have declined some 80%.

Mr. Musk’s funding plan now includes $33.5 billion in equity, up from $27.25 billion, according to a Wednesday regulatory filing. The billionaire Tesla chief executive no longer plans to rely on a margin loan backed by shares of his electric-vehicle company, which are down by about a third since Twitter accepted his bid in late April.

Gold Fields all-share takeover offer for Canada’s Yamana Gold Inc. 
has run into turbulence, with investors in the venerable South African gold major worried about the lack of obvious cost savings, the dilution in their shareholdings and the rich premium it is offering for Yamana.

Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of Nova Scotia, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Bank of Montreal and Toronto-Dominion Bank all lifted their compulsory vaccine policies for employees over the past six weeks, allowing unvaccinated people to work in offices and branches without being subject to additional safety measures such as rapid testing.

Cenovus Energy Inc and its partners have agreed to restart the West White Rose project offshore Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada in 2023, the oil and gas producer said on Tuesday.

South Africa-based miner Gold Fields said Tuesday it has agreed to buy Yamana Gold Inc. in an all-stock deal that values the Canadian company at $6.7 billion, as it seeks to make up for expected declines in production from its existing projects.

Matthew Boswell, the Commissioner of Competition, has filed an application to block the merger of the country’s two largest cable networks, arguing the takeover has already reduced competition for wireless services and would result in higher cellphone bills.

The electric-vehicle maker has lost roughly 30% of its value since April 1, as the will-he-or-won’t-he drama around Mr. Musk’s investment in Twitter and eventual $44 billion deal to take over the social-media company has played out. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell around 15% in that time.

In recent online slide presentations, blog posts and social-media threads, venture-capital doyens including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Craft Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Y Combinator are telling the founders that they need to take emergency action for what could be the sharpest turn in more than a decade. Their advice includes cutting costs, preserving cash and jettisoning hopes that hedge funds or other investors will swoop in with big checks.

After violent windstorms recently swept through southern Ontario and Quebec, uprooting trees and leaving a trail of damage across a vast territory, Renaud’s thoughts went right to his sugar maples in Lanark Highlands, Ont., where storms once considered rogue now seem more frequent.

European Union leaders will fail to agree on a Russian oil ban at a summit on Monday and Tuesday in Brussels, leaders said as they arrived, adding that weeks of haggling over the matter were not over even if they were hopeful for a deal later.

China’s global campaign to expand the reach of its political positions is helping it secure a coveted piece of online real estate: first-page search results on Google and other major Western portals.

Investors have never been in much love with Japan’s small banks. The prospect of a gradual move to clean up their balance sheets may change that.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to issue two proposals that aim to give investors more information about mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and similar vehicles that take into account ESG—or environmental, social and corporate-governance—factors. One of the proposed rules, if adopted, would broaden the SEC’s rules governing fund names, while the other would increase disclosure requirements for funds with an ESG focus.