Tausi Insider

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...

Elon Musk said on Monday that Apple Inc AAPL-Q has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter, the most high-profile company to pull ads from the social media platform over concerns about content moderation policies under its new owner. The move aligns the iPhone maker with a rising list of firms from General Mills Inc to luxury automaker Audi of America that have stopped or paused advertising on Twitter since the billionaire’s $44-billion buyout last month. “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?,” Musk said in a tweet. He later tagged Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook’s Twitter account in another tweet, asking “what’s going on here?” Musk said “yes” in response to a user question on whether Apple was threatening Twitter’s presence in the App Store or making moderation demands. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The world’s most valuable firm spent an estimated $131,600 on Twitter ads between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16...

Turmoil in the cryptocurrency industry has rattled major exchanges and sent the value of digital assets tumbling, but at least one group stands to gain: bankruptcy lawyers. High-profile bankruptcies involving crypto exchange FTX, hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and crypto lenders BlockFi, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital Ltd are generating new opportunities – and big fees – for law firms that counsel troubled companies. Large law firms can rake in more than $100-million in legal fees during a long-running bankruptcy, experts said. “You’ve got to pay the gravedigger,” said Adam Levitin, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in bankruptcy law. “These are complicated cases with a bunch of novel issues, and it shouldn’t be surprising that they are going to require a lot of attorney involvement.” The value of bitcoin has dropped 65 per cent so far this year, dragging down other crypto assets and leaving investors reeling. The spectacular implosion of FTX last month s...

A report by DesRosiers Automotive Consultants says light vehicle sales in November rose 4.1 per cent compared with last year. The firm estimates 114,966 light vehicle were sold last month. The result was up from 110,448 in November 2021. However, DAC noted that sales totalled 143,315 in November 2019 before the pandemic struck. DAC managing partner Andrew King says sales for the year to date stand at 1.38 million units, making it likely that sales for 2022 will finish the year below 1.5 million. King says if that happens it will be first year the market has fallen below that threshold since 2009. https://www.tausiinsider.com/november-auto-sales-in-canada-up-from-year-ago-report-says/?feed_id=331194&_unique_id=645257c64c014

If an employer is facing a “shortage” of workers, there is a simple solution: offer higher wages. Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail Don Wright is a fellow with the Public Policy Forum and a former deputy minister to the premier and head of the public service in British Columbia. He has held senior executive positions in business, government and academia. For almost 50 years Canada has done a thoroughly crappy job – to use the technical term in economics – of fostering a labour market that would provide for steady, year-over-year increases in real pay for working Canadians. I calculate that in 1976 it would have taken a worker earning the median employment income six years to save enough for a down payment on a typical single-family home. In 2020 it would have taken 17 years. If that worker lived in Greater Toronto or Vancouver, it would have taken 28 and 30 years, respectively. Given this history, one might think that governments would welcome the prospect of a change in labour market dyna...

A pro-democracy media tycoon was sentenced to five years and nine months in prison over two fraud charges linked to lease violations in Hong Kong on Saturday, the latest of a series of cases against prominent activists that critics say are aimed at snuffing out dissidents in the city. Jimmy Lai, who was arrested during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following widespread protests in 2019 and under the National Security Law imposed by Beijing, was also fined 2 million Hong Kong dollars ($257,000). His media company, Next Digital, published the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily. The publication was forced to close following the arrests of its top executives, editors and journalists last year. In October, Lai was found guilty of fraud for subletting part of the office space to a secretarial firm, which was also controlled by him, between 2016 and 2020. The second fraud count was for letting the same firm use the media outlet’s office space in an alleged br...

The Chief Executive Officer of Canadian miner First Quantum Minerals FM-T met Panama’s commerce and industry minister on Monday to discuss disagreements over the firm’s copper operations in the country, a person familiar with the matter said. First Quantum CEO Tristan Pascall flew to Panama over Christmas to attend the meeting in person with the minister, Federico Alfaro, according to the source, who said further talks are planned. The commerce and industry ministry did not immediately reply to a request for comment. A spokesperson for First Quantum declined to comment. The government and the mining company have been discussing a deal that would have increased annual tax payments to Panama to at least $375 million. The Panamanian government ordered the firm to halt operations at the Cobre Panama mine after they both missed a deadline to reach an agreement. The firm started arbitration proceedings against the government days after, according to local authorities. A government official...

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Monday that the company is now close to having 100 active Starlinks, the firm’s satellite internet service, in Iran, three months after he tweeted he would activate the service there amid protests around the Islamic country. Musk said, “approaching 100 starlinks active in Iran”, in a tweet on Monday. The billionaire had said in September that he would activate Starlink in Iran as part of a U.S.-backed effort “to advance internet freedom and the free flow of information” to Iranians. The satellite-based broadband service could help Iranians circumvent the government’s restrictions on accessing the internet and certain social media platforms amid protests around the country. The Islamic Republic has been engulfed in protests that erupted after the death in September of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in police custody after being arrested by the morality police for wearing “unsuitable attire”. https://www.tausiinsider.com/elon-musk-says-around-100-...

A group led by the management of Canaccord Genuity Group Inc CF-T said on Monday it would launch a takeover bid for the Canadian financial services company, valuing the firm at nearly $1.13-billion. The offer price of $11.25 per share marks a 31 per cent premium to the stock’s last close. In June, Canaccord’s largest shareholder had expressed concerns that the public markets were undervaluing the company, Canaccord said. After discussion with the company’s chief executive officer Daniel Daviau, the shareholder said it would support a go-private deal. https://www.tausiinsider.com/canaccord-genuitys-management-seeks-to-acquire-firm-in-nearly-1-13-billion-deal/?feed_id=325642&_unique_id=63f8ed3f2934a

Then-McDonald's CEO Stephen Easterbrook speaks during a grand opening ceremony in Chicago, Ill., on June 4, 2018. Scott Olson/Getty Images The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday charged former McDonald’s Corp Chief Executive Stephen Easterbrook with making false and misleading statements to investors about the circumstances of his 2019 termination. The SEC hit Easterbrook with a five-year officer and director bar and a $400,000 civil penalty. McDonald’s fired Easterbrook in November 2019 for exercising “poor judgment” by engaging in a relationship with a McDonald’s employee, the SEC said. But Easterbrook failed to disclose other additional violations of company policy he committed by engaging in undisclosed relationships with other employees of the fast-food giant, it said. The agency also charged McDonald’s MCD-N with “shortcomings” in its public disclosures related to Easterbrook’s ouster, but did not impose any fines on McDonald’s due to the firm’s “substa...

Activist investor Elliott Management Corp has made a multi-billion dollar investment in cloud-based software firm Salesforce Inc, according to people familiar with the matter. It is unclear what Elliott, one of the world’s most prominent activist investors, is pushing for at Salesforce. “We look forward to working constructively with Salesforce to realize the value befitting a company of its stature,” Jesse Cohn, managing partner at Elliott told Reuters. Cohn, who has served on the boards of several technology companies including Twitter and eBay, called Salesforce “one of the pre-eminent software companies in the world.” He added that he has “developed a deep respect for Marc Benioff and what he has built.” Benioff co-founded the company and is its co-CEO. Benioff’s co-CEO, Bret Taylor, is expected to leave this month, leaving Benioff as the sole CEO. Salesforce did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment and Elliott declined to comment. Elliott has made many techno...

The low-interest-rate era was supported by the disinflationary force of globalization that shifted production to lower-cost parts of the world that, in turn, reduced consumer prices. Those days are now over. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Craig Alexander has served as chief economist at Deloitte Canada, the Conference Board of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank. The Bank of Canada is struggling to get inflation back under control. Since it adopted inflation targeting in the early 1990s, the central bank has been remarkably successful at keeping inflation within its 1-per-cent to 3-per-cent-target band. Indeed, the average pace of inflation over the decades has been almost bang on the 2-per-cent midpoint target. However, the inflationary pressures from the contraction in global supply during the pandemic and the surge in demand as government restrictions lifted caught the Bank of Canada and many other central banks flat-footed. The current inflation shock shows Canadians just how cr...