Corporate governance - Vigil

The CEO of legal software company Dye & Durham Ltd. offered a strong defence of his company’s recent controversial price hikes, arguing it has the best product on the market and the expense represents only a small portion of a home’s closing costs.

Canadian Tire Corp. chairman Maureen Sabia is retiring after 37 years on the company’s board of directors.

Economist Lisa Cook has often focused her research on policies that promote broad economic opportunity, particularly for racial minorities and women, an approach she could soon bring to the central bank and its policy making.

The recent stock rout is rattling the multitrillion-dollar market for startups after a long run of record investments, nosebleed valuations and rapid-fire deal-making.

In 2021, investors and regulators continued to focus on the scope and quality of public company disclosure of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information. In the background, the controversial debate intensified over whether ESG information, while of interest to many stakeholders, should be considered “material” for the purposes of the securities laws such that disclosure of inaccurate or misleading ESG information could be a basis for liability.

The U.S. Department of Commerce plans to decrease tariffs for most Canadian softwood producers but raise them for West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. WFG-T , Canada’s largest lumber company.

Many attendees at the recent National Conservatism conference in Orlando will have been perplexed to find a session on “Worker Power” on the agenda. After all, conservatism, at least in America, has long been synonymous with the interests of big business.

This is what some of the world’s corporate leaders said on their quarterly earnings calls this week about what they are seeing and doing about inflation.

The booming business of green finance is being led by an unlikely group of companies that sits at the heart of the financial system.

The giant firms that audit the books, rate the bonds, advise on proxy voting and categorize the world’s companies are spending billions to boost their climate-related operations. That could accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels but could also create a new set of conflicts of interest for industries that struggled to manage them in the past.

Gabe Plotkin wasn’t sleeping. His bets against meme stocks such as GameStop were backfiring, and losses at his $12.5 billion hedge fund were mounting. Strangers angry about his wagers were bombarding him with threatening messages and texts.

AT&T Inc. said on Tuesday it will spin off WarnerMedia in a $43-billion transaction to merge its media properties with Discovery Inc and also cut its dividend by nearly half.

Consumer perception of current economic conditions in December was almost even with April 2020 levels, when sentiment bottomed out following the first major restrictions to control the coronavirus pandemic.

The booming cryptocurrency sector’s complaints that Washington has gone too far in cracking down on its unregulated products are getting tested in a key lawsuit targeting Ripple Labs Inc. and its digital coin, XRP.

Rogers Communications has appointed Glenn Brandt, a 30-year veteran of the telecom and media giant, as its chief financial officer, the latest in a series of changes to the company’s senior leadership under its new CEO.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sent a chill through local markets late last year with talk of introducing restrictions on share buybacks, but the head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange says investors have little to fear. 

As investors, regulators, and stakeholders increasingly recognize environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities as financially material, companies are looking for ways to link management incentives with ESG performance on climate change, diversity and inclusion, and other key issues.

Climate change has emerged as a central and existential risk for organizations—and fertile and critical ground for innovation. Yet new Deloitte research shows that many audit committees, an essential bulwark in helping companies manage and respond to risks and opportunities, haven’t yet sufficiently placed climate change initiatives at the core of their agendas.

Research has shown that venture capital (VC) firms substantially influence the overall economy. According to Gornall and Strebulaev (2021), among all U.S. public companies founded since 1968, VC-backed companies account for 77 percent of total market capitalization, 41 percent of total employees, and 92 percent of R&D spending. In addition, there is extensive literature discussing the role of VC firms at startup companies, where they do everything from providing advice and support to improving corporate governance to fostering corporate innovation.

Citrix Systems will be taken private in an all-cash acquisition by Vista Equity Partners and Elliott Investment Management LP valued at $16.5 billion, including the assumption of debt.

As Chinese property giant Evergrande continues to struggle, the battle for control of its assets is heating up. Who is still standing when the dust clears will say a lot about the future of China as a place to invest more generally.