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The Federal Reserve is seen slowing the pace of its rate hikes after a government report showed consumer prices rose less than expected last month, an indication that the central bank’s aggressive policy tightening this year has begun to bite. The Fed has raised rates more sharply this year than at any time since the 1980s to battle high inflation, delivering a fourth straight 75-basis point rate hike last week that brought the policy rate to a 3.75 per cent-4 per cent range. It was near zero in early March. Futures contracts that settle to the Fed’s benchmark rate now show traders expect that blistering pace of policy tightening to slow next month, pricing in about an 80 per cent chance the Fed will deliver just a half-point rate hike. The Fed is then seen shifting to quarter-point hikes in January, with the policy rate ultimately peaking in the 4.75 per cent-5 per cent range by March. Before the report traders had expected the Fed to raise rates above 5 per cent by then The consume...

Romspen, one of Canada’s biggest private mortgage lenders, with $3.2-billion in assets under management, is freezing investor redemptions, citing some trouble with loan repayments. The act of freezing redemptions, known as “gating” in the investment industry, prevents investors from taking their money out of the fund. Because Romspen is a private lender, a preset mechanism for redemptions normally permits a certain amount to be paid back to investors each month. The company has not said how long the freeze will last. Instead, it told investors this week that it will “temporarily defer payment of unit redemptions requests until there is more clarity with respect to the fund’s timetable for borrower loan repayments and the receipt of proceeds of collateral and asset monetizations.” Romspen’s portfolio largely comprises construction and predevelopment loans, and it lends to borrowers across the United States and Canada. In its letter to investors, the company warned that “if redemption...

Sam Bankman-Fried speaks at the Crypto Bahamas conference in Nassau on April 27. The rapid collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX built by Bankman-Fried suggests that no company in the freewheeling, loosely regulated crypto industry is safe. ERIKA P. RODRIGUEZ/The New York Times News Service The collapse of FTX Ltd. is sending shockwaves through the crypto industry, as the exchange scrambles to find a financial lifeline amid reports that it funneled customer assets worth billions of dollars into risky bets through an affiliated trading firm. Investments in FTX made by Canadian organizations and businesses, such as a US$95-million stake held by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, are at risk of vanishing after the platform halted withdrawals of customer funds this week, citing a “liquidity crunch.” The prices of multiple cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin BTX22 and ether, fell to new lows this week. And companies in Canada are receiving warnings from provincial and territorial r...

If your career objective is to climb the corporate ladder, then you need to get recognized as a high-potential employee, or HiPo. HiPos have been tagged as the top performers in an organization and are invited to key meetings, asked for input, offered advanced learning opportunities and given plum assignments. And even when economic circumstances lead to layoffs, they are the ones who don’t just avoid the axe, but always seem to endure without any scars. So what does it take to be recognized as a HiPo? While some of it may be who you know, or luck, there are ways to influence how you and your talents are perceived. If you are deliberate and thoughtful about showcasing your strengths and establishing your workplace value, you can, and will, position yourself as a HiPo. Here are seven things you can do right now to become worthy of HiPo status. 1. Do excellent work Fulfill your current responsibilities. Don’t just perform well, perform exceptionally well. This is your baseline. If you ...

Pete Ryan/Tausi Insider On a warm night this past July, Bay Street finally came back out to play. Over a glittering view of Toronto’s entertainment district from the rooftop terrace of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, 300 guests — including lawyers, students, clients, bankers and businesspeople —enjoyed mini Jamaican patties, jerk shrimp, rum punch and ginger beer, while a steel-pan band and dancers in traditional Caribbean dress entertained the crowd. Caribbean Fête, hosted annually since 2018 by the Caribbean Practice Group at WeirFoulds LLP, made its long-awaited return after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus. “We had people constantly asking us, when is this thing coming back? Are you guys ever going to do this party again?” says partner Kayla Theeuwen, who barely had a chance to enjoy the food and drink, flitting about as the consummate host and reconnecting with her network. Indeed, WeirFoulds had been trying to get this popular shindig going again since it was last held in February 2020, to m...

OUR METHODOLOGY Almost 25,000 lawyers as well as in-house lawyers and legal executives working in legal departments of a company across Canada were actively invited to take part in the survey. The sample was collected via research conducted by Statista on company websites and further public available sources. Invitations were sent by email with a personalized link that could only be used once. In addition, lawyers and clients could participate in the survey via an open link. In these cases, the participants had to validate themself by providing a personal company email address before their answers were included in the evaluation. The link was announced and made available online on Tausi Insider’s Report on Business magazine's website. The survey, available in English and French, was conducted online between May 17 and July 10, 2022 and more than 3,100 responded to the invitation. Statista recorded more than 10,000 recommendations for the...

Loblaw Companies Ltd. L-T saw profits spike by 29 per cent in the third quarter, which the company attributed primarily to growth in sales at its drugstores – and attempted to send the message that it is not profiting from food inflation. Canada’s largest grocer on Wednesday reported net earnings available to common shareholders of $556-million or $1.69 per share in the 16 weeks ended Oct. 8, compared to $431-million or $1.27 per share in the same period last year. In a release on Wednesday, the Brampton, Ont.-based company wrote that its gross profit margins in food retail did not increase compared to the same period last year, when inflation began accelerating. Loblaw profited from increased sales of drugstore categories such as beauty products and cough and cold medicines, which have high profit margins, according to the company. Canadian grocery store operators have faced increasing scrutiny as prices for basic necessities have risen at a pace not seen in this country in 40 years...

If your career objective is to climb the corporate ladder, then you need to get recognized as a high-potential employee, or HiPo. HiPos have been tagged as the top performers in an organization and are invited to key meetings, asked for input, offered advanced learning opportunities and given plum assignments. And even when economic circumstances lead to layoffs, they are the ones who seem to emerge unscathed. So what does it take to be recognized as a HiPo? While some of it may be who you know, or luck, there are ways to influence how you and your talents are perceived. If you are deliberate and thoughtful about showcasing your strengths and establishing your workplace value, you can, and will, position yourself as a HiPo. Read the full article for seven things you can do right now to become worthy of HiPo status. Stop trying to fix women. Start fixing your organization for gender equality Do women become less “nice” in middle age? It would appear that we think so. And that throws a...

RCMP say two workers have died in an explosion at an oil and gas site in northern Alberta. Officers and emergency crews were called Saturday to the site near Slave Lake, about 250 kilometres north of Edmonton. The deaths are being investigated by Alberta Occupational Health and Safety. A government official says no further information is being released at this time. The site is operated by Calgary-based Tamarack Valley Energy. https://www.tausiinsider.com/two-workers-killed-in-blast-at-oil-and-gas-site-in-northern-alberta/?feed_id=344197&_unique_id=6488cfb023f71

Writer Annie Diller called a schedule “a net for catching days.” In The Writing Life , she noted that what we do with each hour adds up to what we do with our lives: “A schedule defends from chaos and whim.” But the man who has given millions of people a rigorous system for organizing the chaos of their lives through his Getting Things Done approach, David Allen, recently noted that at some point you must be guided by instinct. “Every decision we make about what action to take at any point in time is an intuitive risk. I have 20 minutes before my next meeting – should I call Bob, work on chapter eight or go get Susan’s opinion on the new software?” he writes in his newsletter. Mr. Allen’s system revolves around lists. Many of us try to prioritize our tasks, perhaps coding them A, B or C or using the features of our to-do app to rank their importance. It seems rational, scientific in a way. But he reminds us those are inevitably simplistic rating systems and miss some important conte...

The Federal Reserve building, in Washington, on Jan. 26. JOSHUA ROBERTS/Reuters Federal Reserve Bank of Boston leader Susan Collins said on Friday that with little evidence price pressures are waning, the Fed may need to deliver another 75-basis point rate hike as it seeks to get inflation under control. “We’re now in a phase where deliberate increments – all of the possible increments – should be on the table as we decide what is sufficiently tight,” Collins told CNBC. “Seventy-five still is on the table; I think it’s important to say that as well.” The Fed has lifted its policy rate more rapidly this year than any time since the 1980s, including four straight 75-basis-point increases that by early this month had brought short-term borrowing costs to a 3.75 per cent-4 per cent range, from near zero in March. Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policy-makers have signalled that the central bank could shift to smaller rate hikes next month to avoid tightening more than necessary and sen...

A totem pole is pictured outside the Kinder Morgan Burnaby Terminal and Tank Farm in Burnaby, B.C., on June 20, 2019. JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images Robert Merasty is the executive director of the Indigenous Resource Network and former chief of Flying Dust First Nation. With the continuing global energy crisis, Canada is looking at ways to fast-track resource development infrastructure. For example, the federal government’s recent fiscal update provided $1.28-billion to improve its response time in assessing major projects. While this could help Ottawa in its regulatory approval process, there’s still a piece missing: The industry needs more support from Indigenous communities if it wants to move projects along quicker. The federal government has said multiple times that its duty to consult with Indigenous communities affected by mega-projects does not equal to their having a veto. But time and again, Indigenous opposition has been a major force in stopping or delaying energy infra...

As companies are adapting to new ways of working at varying speeds, there is a need for organizations, teams and individuals to optimize and prioritize along new dimensions: What work is best suited in-office versus remote? What is best accomplished synchronously versus asynchronously? How can we rethink and revitalize meetings so we aren’t stuck in meetings all day with no time to think or do? Many employees are overstretched and overwhelmed, finding there aren’t enough hours in the day to deliver on commitments. According to Microsoft’s September 2022 Work Trends Index , 48 per cent of employees and 53 per cent of managers say they are already burned out. In the same report, it was noted that last spring, meetings had increased by 153 per cent since the start of the pandemic, “double bookings” increased by 46 per cent in the last year and, in an average week, 42 per cent of participants multitask during meetings. This goes to show that, in many cases, there is no slack in the syste...

U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks at a news conference where she introduced a resolution to investigate funding for Ukraine, on Capitol Hill in Washington on Nov. 17. AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES/The Associated Press Elon Musk’s Twitter TWTR-N has reinstated the personal account of far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which was banned in January for violating the platform’s COVID misinformation policies at the time. Greene’s reinstatement comes after Musk over the weekend reinstated the account of former President Donald Trump, who was banned in the aftermath of the deadly Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol in 2021. Twitter – at the time – feared there was a risk of further incitement to violence if Trump was allowed to remain on the platform. Trump himself has said he won’t return to Twitter and as of Monday had not yet tweeted since the reinstatement, although he also hasn’t deleted his account. Musk apparently based his decision to allow Trump back on the site on an unscienti...