Corporate governance - Vigil

A Canadian judge on Thursday delayed a bid by the Canadian border city of Windsor, Ontario, to obtain a court order to remove demonstrators who for four days have blocked most traffic on a crucial U.S.-Canada trade corridor.

The federal budget in January ran a monthly surplus for the first time since September 2019, as the government took in more in tax and other revenue and spent less on Covid-19 pandemic aid programs.

Apollo Global Management Inc. is nearing a deal to acquire the point-of-sale terminal business of European payments company Worldline  for close to $2.3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Last November, Atom Bank, a mid-sized financial services company based in the United Kingdom, introduced a policy that encouraged its 400-plus employees to work just four days a week. The bank told staff the policy was voluntary, but urged them to find ways to reduce the total number of hours they worked from 37.5 to 34, and to take either Mondays or Fridays off.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has also expressed an interest in ESG disclosure more broadly and has indicated the potential for rulemaking in the near future.

These votes have been popularised by the Say on Climate initiative, which, in managing the transition to net zero, calls on companies to: annually disclose emissions; produce a plan to manage their emissions; and submit the plan to shareholders for approval at an Annual General Meeting (AGM).

China Evergrande Group’s EGRNF 2.38% chief executive sold his holdings of company dollar bonds with a face value of $128 million last summer, stock exchange-filings showed, with the sales coming a few weeks before the property developer issued a profit warning.

Microsoft Corp. employs about 5,000 people in its finance team, a number that has remained largely flat in recent years, even though the company’s operations, profit and market capitalization have grown tremendously. Microsoft had 181,000 employees at the end of June, when its fiscal year closed, up from around 163,000 a year before.

Chief executives love to talk about “stakeholder capitalism.” But when they face a final choice to sell a company and divide the spoils between workers and shareholders, guess who gets the money? You got it: Shareholders are the winners—along with the executives themselves.

Private equity dealmaking reached historic heights in 2021. Building on a strong rebound in the second half of 2020, private equity set new annual records in global deal volume and transaction value. 

Sarah Bloom Raskin, President Biden’s pick to become the Federal Reserve’s top banking regulator, said she would take added steps to assure lawmakers that she would avoid potential conflicts of interest.

The Securities and Exchange Commission proposed Thursday to shorten the window for shareholders to alert the market when they build an ownership stake of more than 5% of a company’s stock, a potential setback to activist investors.

Canada’s two largest life insurers beat analysts’ profit expectations despite continuing COVID-19 lockdowns in several regions globally and mortality rates spiking in Asian countries and the United States, but saw dramatically different reactions from investors on Thursday.

Brookfield Asset Management is mulling whether to carve out its asset management business into a separate company, a move that could create a new enterprise worth as much as US$100-billion.

Numbers from Women Get on Board Inc. (WGOB) and investor relations company IR Labs Inc. show that, of the 237 new listings on the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture exchange in 2021, just 15.8 per cent of the 1,421 board seats were filled by women. Nearly four companies in 10 had no female directors.

Japan is taking action to keep interest rates ultra low and stimulate its economy, bucking the global trend symbolized by the Federal Reserve’s plans for multiple rate increases.

Regulators proposed expansive new requirements for private investment funds Wednesday as part of a widening effort to police a rapidly growing but relatively opaque corner of the capital markets.

Delaware’s famous corporate law and its highly respected specialized Court of Chancery attract entrepreneurs from all over the world, who choose the state as their locus of incorporation and litigation forum, and global investors who choose Delaware law as the law governing their corporate investments and mergers and acquisitions (M&A).