Tausi Insider

The Liberal government’s proposed tax on stock buybacks is going to be expensive for a number of Canadian companies. Unfortunately, investors can’t be sure of which ones, and by how much. The reason – and I know this will shock you – is that Canadian disclosure requirements for companies’ buyback activity have lagged U.S. rules for nearly 20 years. And the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) would like to expand what companies there reveal, which threatens to widen the information gap with Canada. To review, the government said earlier last month it plans to introduce a 2-per-cent tax on share buybacks starting in 2024. The idea is ripped off from the United States, which in August brought in a 1-per-cent tax on stock buybacks, starting in 2023. A lot of the discussion of the proposal is black-and-white: The Liberal government clearly sees buybacks as a diversion of capital from job-creating investment; business groups have said the buybacks are a legitimate capital-management t...

As part of its contract manufacturing business, Waterloo Brewing has already been producing Carlsberg’s Somersby Apple Cider for the Canadian market since 2019. ANDREW KELLY/Reuters Danish beer giant Carlsberg Group CABGY is buying Canada’s Waterloo Brewing Ltd. WBR-T for $144-million, the companies announced late Wednesday. The $4-per-share all-cash deal, which represents a 19.4-per-cent premium to Waterloo’s Dec. 14 closing price, is by far the largest deal to buy a Canadian brewery in recent history. Waterloo, founded in 1984 as Ontario’s first craft brewery and based in Kitchener, Ont., produces Laker beer, LandShark Lager, various Seagram’s-branded products, as well as its namesake Waterloo Brewing lineup. Until mid-2019, the company was known as Brick Brewing Co. Ltd. Shareholders must now vote on whether to approve the transaction, which the two companies expect to close in the first half of 2023. It is the second time this year that a Danish brewer has agreed to purchase a Ca...

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have made advances in quantum devices, including a fork-like silicon grating structure that generates twisted neutrons with angular momentum. Dusan Sarenac The University of Waterloo last month announced the creation of a minuscule device – so tiny it can fit more than a million times over on a grain of sugar – that twisted and expanded neutron beams into 10-centimetre-wide doughnut shapes. While most people are unlikely to care about the experimental manipulation of subatomic particles, for those immersed in quantum science the novel device was another step toward one of the ultimate goals in the field: to build a full-fledged, all-purpose quantum computer. These machines would have abilities superior to the world’s best supercomputers, and they would be able to solve problems that are currently unsolvable. The global race to build one has been less of a sprint and more of a series of small but significant steps, combined with a few leaps. “...

Canada’s publicly traded home and auto insurers are designed to be boring and predictable businesses. But stellar stock market returns have catapulted them into rarefied air, allowing them to dethrone the Big Six banks as the country’s hottest financial companies. Shares of Intact Financial Corp. IFC-T and Definity Financial Corp. DFY-T trounced those of Canada’s largest lenders this year, climbing 21 per cent and 30 per cent respectively, as of the market’s close on Dec. 23. The banks were down 15 per cent on average. The insurers also beat the broader market: The S&P/TSX Composite Index is down 8 per cent since the start of the year. Intact and Definity are property and casualty insurers, meaning they insure personal automobiles and residential homes, and also offer commercial insurance for the likes of contractors and financial and legal professionals, among others. Despite their presence in day-to-day life, they aren’t household names in the same way as banks or life insurer...

A Google office in Toronto in 2018. COLE BURSTON /The Canadian Press Google and YouTube parent Alphabet Inc. GOOG-Q is cutting about 12,000 jobs worldwide, including in Canada, as the company confronts a slowdown in its rapid growth amid an economic downturn hitting the technology sector with a series of blows. The cuts, which amount to 6 per cent of the California-based internet giant’s global work force, are piling on top of a brutal week of massive layoffs across the tech industry. Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. AMZN-Q this week started its biggest-ever round of job cuts, culling 18,000 workers. And Washington-based Microsoft Corp. MSFT-Q is slashing 10,000 employees as it also cuts costs. It is a continuation of the layoffs that first swept across the tech sector last year, when Meta Platforms Inc. META-Q, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, announced cuts of about 11,000 jobs and beleaguered social media network Twitter Inc. let go more than half of its employees. Ca...

A Google office in Toronto in 2018. COLE BURSTON /The Canadian Press Google and YouTube parent Alphabet Inc. GOOG-Q is cutting about 12,000 jobs worldwide, including in Canada, as the company confronts a slowdown in its rapid growth amid an economic downturn hitting the technology sector with a series of blows. The cuts, which amount to 6 per cent of the California-based internet giant’s global work force, are piling on top of a brutal week of massive layoffs across the tech industry. Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. AMZN-Q this week started its biggest-ever round of job cuts, culling 18,000 workers. And Washington-based Microsoft Corp. MSFT-Q is slashing 10,000 employees as it also cuts costs. It is a continuation of the layoffs that first swept across the tech sector last year, when Meta Platforms Inc. META-Q, the parent of Facebook and Instagram, announced cuts of about 11,000 jobs and beleaguered social media network Twitter Inc. let go more than half of its employees. Ca...

Researchers at the University of Waterloo have made advances in quantum devices, including a fork-like silicon grating structure that generates twisted neutrons with angular momentum. Dusan Sarenac The University of Waterloo last month announced the creation of a minuscule device – so tiny it can fit more than a million times over on a grain of sugar – that twisted and expanded neutron beams into 10-centimetre-wide doughnut shapes. While most people are unlikely to care about the experimental manipulation of subatomic particles, for those immersed in quantum science the novel device was another step toward one of the ultimate goals in the field: to build a full-fledged, all-purpose quantum computer. These machines would have abilities superior to the world’s best supercomputers, and they would be able to solve problems that are currently unsolvable. The global race to build one has been less of a sprint and more of a series of small but significant steps, combined with a few leaps. “...