Tausi Insider

Dentalcorp Holdings Ltd. DNTL-T, Canada’s largest consolidator of dental clinics, is considering selling itself just a year and a half after setting a record for an initial public offering of a health care company. Dentalcorp announced Monday its board had launched a strategic review to assess its options to “unlock shareholder value.” The company raised $700-million in an IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange in May of 2021. At the time it was the biggest IPO for a life-sciences company on the TSX, though it was overtaken a year later by eyecare-product maker Bausch + Lomb Corp. Inside the corporate dash to buy up dentists’ offices, veterinary clinics and pharmacies Dentalcorp’s stock made its debut at $14 a share and climbed as high as $18.36, but has since been in free fall, hitting as low as $5.65 last week. The shares rallied 32 per cent on Monday’s news to reach $8 at day’s close. Chief executive officer Graham Rosenberg said in a news release that the company’s strategic review wa...

Natalie Archibald, vice-president of people at Clio, in Burnaby, B.C., on Nov. 29. DARRYL DYCK Employees at Clio can take their dogs to work and have access to a flexible paid time-off program. Staff at Schneider Electric Canada can save up their paid time off that the company will augment for a paid leave of absence down the road. And Capital One gives its employees an “Invest in Yourself” day every month to do whatever recharges their souls. These are just some examples of what employers across Canada are doing to prevent burnout among employees and help them manage their mental health. The Burnaby, B.C., headquarters of Clio has a yoga studio, a games lounge, community gardens and libraries. In addition, the company provides every employee with $2,000 a year for counselling services and a monthly wellness allowance. But the jewel in Clio’s wellness crown is the flexible paid-time-off program launched this year. Instead of allotting vacation time by years of service, the legal prac...

Svante's carbon-capture demonstration plant in November, 2019, located outside of Lloydminster, Sask. Handout Svante Inc. has raised US$318-million from a group of investors led by a unit of Chevron Corp., securing a new round of financing for plans to speed up the rollout of carbon-capture technology. Svante, based in Burnaby, B.C., has developed patented technology that captures carbon dioxide from smokestacks. Under the proprietary design of “adsorption beds,” CO2 molecules from flue gas adhere to a system of rotating filters made from engineered nanomaterials. “We are proud that Chevron and a group of existing and new strategic and financial investors have demonstrated their confidence in Svante to be a key player in building a commercially viable, carbon management industry,” Svante chief executive officer Claude Letourneau said in a statement. Thursday’s announcement on the Series E fundraising round didn’t provide details on the impact of the latest financing on Svante’s e...

Bob Espey, President and Chief Executive Office of Parkland, at one of the company’s On the Run stores in Mississauga on Nov. 29, 2022. Fred Lum/Tausi Insider Last fall Bob Espey, the chief executive officer of Parkland Corp. PKI-T, stood near a maze of pipes at the company’s crude oil refinery in Burnaby, B.C., and explained how important the facility is to Parkland’s future. “The energy we produce and sell powers people’s lives every day,” he said. Later, while sampling a new chipotle grilled chicken BLT at the Mississauga test kitchen of M&M Food Market, which Calgary-based Parkland also owns, he detailed why that division was also critical to the company’s prospects. “M&M plays a central role in our diversification strategy,” he said. If hydrocarbons and hot sandwiches seem like a disjointed pairing, it speaks to the difficult position Parkland finds itself in today. For years, Parkland enjoyed a winning strategy of buying up fuel station and convenience store chains in C...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to announce a $40-million contribution Monday to a Toronto startup that has vaulted to the lead in the global race to develop superpowerful quantum computers, according to a person familiar with the situation. The government is providing the funding to Xanadu Quantum Technologies Inc., one of many companies around the world that is trying to build computers in a new way, by harnessing the ephemeral properties of subatomic particles to perform calculations that would take current supercomputers millennia to run. The Globe is not identifying the source because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The funding, through the government’s Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) comes less than two weeks after the Liberal government unveiled spending plans for its $360-million seven-year national quantum strategy. The initiative is one of myriad efforts it has undertaken since coming to power in 2015 to try to drive improvements to Canada’s ch...

Svante's carbon-capture demonstration plant in November, 2019, located outside of Lloydminster, Sask. Handout Svante Inc. has raised US$318-million from a group of investors led by a unit of Chevron Corp., securing a new round of financing for plans to speed up the rollout of carbon-capture technology. Svante, based in Burnaby, B.C., has developed patented technology that captures carbon dioxide from smokestacks. Under the proprietary design of “adsorption beds,” CO2 molecules from flue gas adhere to a system of rotating filters made from engineered nanomaterials. “We are proud that Chevron and a group of existing and new strategic and financial investors have demonstrated their confidence in Svante to be a key player in building a commercially viable, carbon management industry,” Svante chief executive officer Claude Letourneau said in a statement. Thursday’s announcement on the Series E fundraising round didn’t provide details on the impact of the latest financing on Svante’s e...