Tausi Insider

Toronto home prices dropped in November, the eighth consecutive monthly decline since the Bank of Canada started reducing the supply of cheap credit. But new listings of properties continued to drop, suggesting homeowners are weathering sharp jumps in interest rates and have not been forced to sell their homes. The home price index was $1,089,800, a 1-per-cent decline from October, according to the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board (TRREB). The index, which excludes sales of extremely expensive homes and is the industry’s preferred measure of home prices, is down 5.5 per cent compared with November of last year. Activity continued to wane, with higher borrowing costs pricing many prospective buyers out of the market. Fewer of them are able to qualify for a mortgage large enough to afford homes in the Toronto region, the country’s second-most expensive real estate market after Vancouver. That, in turn, has reduced competition and made homeowners reluctant to put their properties up f...

Legal-software seller Dye & Durham is having trouble winning at the corporate-governance game. But it seems to be doing a great job of working the refs. Glass Lewis & Co., one of two major proxy-advisory services, has republished its recommendations in advance of Dye & Durham’s annual meeting on Dec. 19. Glass Lewis initially had harsh words for the company’s pay practices and said shareholders should withhold their votes for two members of the company’s compensation committee, Mario Di Pietro and David MacDonald. The revised proxy paper, however, softens the language surrounding Dye & Durham’s compensation practices and reverses the negative recommendation; now, Glass Lewis says Dye & Durham shareholders should vote “yes” for the full board. Glass Lewis had it right the first time. Dye & Durham is a governance laggard. The company is the last remaining member of the S&P/TSX Composite with an all-male board. Dye & Durham plans to fix that this month wi...

Royal Bank of Canada will soon require its small business clients to pay a monthly fee to a third-party service if they wish to pay their taxes through their bank account. Alex Lupul/The Canadian Press Some banks are adding monthly service fees for businesses who want to pay their tax bills through their bank accounts, an extra expense that business groups say is unreasonable. Royal Bank of Canada RY-T will soon join the Bank of Nova Scotia in requiring small-business clients to pay a monthly fee to a third-party service if they wish to pay their taxes through their bank account. RBC recently informed its personal and commercial account holders that it was discontinuing its use of Interac Online Payments, which had no fees, as of May 30. Going forward, commercial accounts will have to use a service provided by Can-Act Payment Services Inc., which is owned by software company Dye & Durham Corp. RBC and Scotiabank both charge business clients a $25 setup fee for registering with Ca...

Legal-software seller Dye & Durham is having trouble winning at the corporate-governance game. But it seems to be doing a great job of working the refs. Glass Lewis & Co., one of two major proxy-advisory services, has republished its recommendations in advance of Dye & Durham’s annual meeting on Dec. 19. Glass Lewis initially had harsh words for the company’s pay practices and said shareholders should withhold their votes for two members of the company’s compensation committee, Mario Di Pietro and David MacDonald. The revised proxy paper, however, softens the language surrounding Dye & Durham’s compensation practices and reverses the negative recommendation; now, Glass Lewis says Dye & Durham shareholders should vote “yes” for the full board. Glass Lewis had it right the first time. Dye & Durham is a governance laggard. The company is the last remaining member of the S&P/TSX Composite with an all-male board. Dye & Durham plans to fix that this month wi...