Tausi Insider

Early data for Black Friday suggest a mixed bag for online sales as inflation hits shoppers ahead of the holiday season. Shopify Inc. SHOP-T said sales by merchants on its system set a new record for Black Friday as they rose 17 per cent compared with a year ago. The e-commerce company said merchant sales from the start of Black Friday in New Zealand through to the end of the period in California totalled US$3.36 billion, with sales of US$3.5 million per minute at the peak. However, Salesforce said online sales in Canada were down year over year for Black Friday, though they increased globally by three per cent. Traffic from customers on computers was down 10 per cent, while traffic from mobile devices was down one per cent Discounts were also steeper, up 10 per cent from last year, Salesforce said. Shopify said top product categories were apparel and accessories, followed by health and beauty, and home and garden. Shopify provides e-commerce tools for businesses in more than 175 cou...

HSBC is cutting as many as 15% of its 2,000 senior operations managers worldwide, as it attempts to streamline its management ranks and reduce costs, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. The global job cuts at the London-headquartered bank will fall across several business units and geographical locations and result in the loss of at least 200 positions, mostly with the title of Chief Operating Officer (COO), the sources said. HSBC, which used to position itself as the world’s local bank, employs many COOs because country and business lines have their own separate COO, the sources said. HSBC declined to comment. The lender has been shrinking its sprawling global business for several years, downsizing in many regions and exiting some countries entirely as it tries to improve shareholder returns. The latest cuts are already under way, one of the sources said. CEO Noel Quinn said on Thursday HSBC has identified $1.7 billion of extra cost cuts it will make next year as it battl...

Airfares on key corporate travel routes are expected to rise by as much as 25 per cent in 2023 amid high fuel prices, a stronger U.S. dollar and labour and aircraft shortages, a forecast from American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) showed. The biggest gains are expected in economy class on routes between Australia and Asia, in business class on Australian domestic flights and those to New Zealand, as well as in economy class on Asia-Europe flights. The cost of economy class flights within North America will rise by a more muted 3 per cent and within Europe by 5.5 per cent as capacity cuts during the pandemic are restored. “Following significant price increases in 2022, fare rises in the competitive North America air sector are likely to be of a smaller degree than those forecast for Europe and Asia Pacific,” Amex GBT said on Thursday. Flights from Asia to Europe are being forced to take longer routes in many cases as airlines avoid Russian airspace because of its war with ...

A for sale sign in front of a house in Prospect Heights, Ill., on July 10. Nam Y. Huh/The Associated Press House prices in most major property markets will fall in 2023, according to nearly 100 housing market analysts polled by Reuters, but they predicted double-digit peak-to-trough declines will not come close to making them affordable. Mortgage rates have doubled on average in developed economies since the start of the year as their central banks fight runaway inflation with higher interest rates. With a few more hikes still expected to come, that trend was unlikely to reverse in the short-to-medium term. House prices in the United States, Canada, Britain, Germany, Australia, and New Zealand rose between 25 per cent and more than 50 per cent since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020. That rally, lit by rock-bottom rates and a scramble by millions who shifted to work from home to find more living space, pushed properties further out of reach for many first-time ho...

Twitter Inc said on Wednesday it was offering an annual plan for its subscription service called Twitter Blue, which includes its sought-after “verified” badge, at a discount to its monthly price. Users can subscribe to the service for an annual price of $84, instead of a monthly subscription price of $8 on the web and $11 on Apple devices. The discount would be available in countries including United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand and Australia, Twitter said. Since billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter for $44-billion last year, he has brought changes to the company including new subscription plans for Twitter Blue. The blue check mark was previously reserved for verified accounts of politicians, famous personalities, journalists and other public figures. But a subscription option, open to anyone prepared to pay, was rolled out last year to help Twitter grow revenue as Musk fights to retain advertisers. Earlier in December, Musk added that Twitter’s Basic b...

A British Columbia First Nation is celebrating a deal with a coal company that gives it veto power over a proposed mine on its land. “It’s a new and, I want to say, better way of relationship-building with First Nations,” said Chief Heidi Gravelle of the Tobacco Plains First Nation in southeast B.C. Tobacco Plains has signed an agreement with NWP Coal Canada Ltd. over that company’s Crown Mountain coal proposal that sets the band up as the project’s environmental reviewer and regulator. The company, based in New Zealand and Australia, has agreed it won’t go ahead unless the band gives its OK. “We were brave enough to say we believe we can earn your ‘yes’ and we’re willing to take your ‘no’ as a real no,” said David Baines, NWP’s director of project development. “If we can’t earn a yes from them we don’t have a good enough proposal.” Crown Mountain, located near Sparwood, B.C., has been before federal and provincial regulators since 2014. It’s one of a number of steelmaking coal proje...