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...

International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on Thursday the chance of global growth falling below 2 per cent next year was increasing due to continued effects of the war in Ukraine and simultaneous slowdowns in Europe, China and the United States. Georgieva told the Reuters NEXT conference that she was particularly concerned about the slowdown in China because the world’s second-largest economy has been a strong engine of global growth. The IMF will update its economic outlook in January and the picture “has darkened recently on the basis of what we see in consumer sentiment, in investor sentiment,” she said. https://www.tausiinsider.com/imf-chief-sees-higher-chance-of-global-growth-below-2-in-2023/?feed_id=331508&_unique_id=64554966d557c

The Goldman Sachs stall on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, on July 16, 2013. Brendan McDermid/Reuters Goldman Sachs Group GS-N will start cutting thousands of jobs across the firm from Wednesday, two sources familiar with the move said, as it prepares for a tough economic environment. Just over 3,000 employees will be let go, one of the sources said, but the final number is yet to be determined. That scale of layoffs would be the largest since the 2008 financial crisis, one of the sources said. The sources could not be named as the information was not yet disclosed publicly. Goldman Sachs declined to comment. Bloomberg News reported on Sunday that Goldman would eliminate about 3,200 positions. Goldman had 49,100 employees at the end of the third quarter, after adding significant numbers of staff during the coronavirus pandemic. The layoffs are likely to affect most of the bank’s major divisions, but should centre on Goldman Sachs’ investment banking arm, one of the sources ...

Big bank economists say the surprisingly resilient economy is likely headed for a mild slowdown in the year ahead, but that recent events show how difficult it is to predict the future. Speaking at an Economic Club of Canada panel, Scotiabank BNS-T chief economist Jean-Francois Perrault said the economy could be headed for the mythical soft landing that policy-makers have long aimed for before but have never really achieved. TD TD-T chief economist Beata Caranci said that while the bank is forecasting about 100,000 job losses this year, it’s much less than the 300,000 that would normally occur in a recession. Caranci said emerging factors like the reopening of the Chinese economy could however push inflation higher and force rates to stay higher for longer, which would worsen the economic hit. RBC RY-T chief economist Craig Wright said the bank is sticking to its forecast of a recession that it’s been predicting since last July, as a number of long-term tailwinds including free trade...

Canadian business and consumer sentiment continues to sour in the face of rising interest rates, while expectations of future inflation have begun to level off. These factors could influence the Bank of Canada as it considers slowing, or perhaps pausing, interest rate hikes in the coming weeks. A pair of surveys released by the central bank on Monday show consumers are cutting back on spending and many companies expect a slowdown in sales. The majority of respondents to both surveys believe the Canadian economy will enter a recession in the coming year, although most expect it will be a mild to moderate slowdown. The Business Outlook Survey, conducted from mid-November to early December, also showed that companies are experiencing less intense labour and supply chain constraints. That suggests inflationary pressures are easing. While the pair of surveys paint a downbeat picture of the Canadian economy at the end of 2022, they suggest the Bank of Canada’s interest rate hikes are havin...

Canadian business and consumer sentiment continues to sour in the face of rising interest rates, while expectations of future inflation have begun to level off. These factors could influence the Bank of Canada as it considers slowing, or perhaps pausing, interest rate hikes in the coming weeks. A pair of surveys released by the central bank on Monday show consumers are cutting back on spending and many companies expect a slowdown in sales. The majority of respondents to both surveys believe the Canadian economy will enter a recession in the coming year, although most expect it will be a mild to moderate slowdown. The Business Outlook Survey, conducted from mid-November to early December, also showed that companies are experiencing less intense labour and supply chain constraints. That suggests inflationary pressures are easing. While the pair of surveys paint a downbeat picture of the Canadian economy at the end of 2022, they suggest the Bank of Canada’s interest rate hikes are havin...

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon speaks at the Boston College Chief Executives Club luncheon, in Boston, Mass., on Nov. 23, 2021. BRIAN SNYDER/Reuters JPMorgan Chase & Co JPM-N Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon expects interest rates to go beyond 5 per cent as inflation remains high, he said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday. “I actually think rates are probably going to go higher than 5 per cent … there’s a lot of underlying inflation, which won’t go away so quick,” Dimon said. U.S. Federal Reserve officials in December predicted that the rate, currently in the 4.25 per cent-4.50 per cent range, would rise to just over 5 per cent by the end of 2023 and likely remain there for some time. Policy-makers at the central bank have said they will continue to push with interest rate hikes to get inflation firmly under control even as the economy shows signs of a slowdown. U.S. consumer prices fell for the first time in more than two-and-a-half years in December, adding to hopes that infla...

Oil prices settled largely unchanged on Wednesday after government data showed a smaller-than-anticipated build in U.S. crude inventories, countering weak economic data from Tuesday. Brent crude futures settled at $86.12 a barrel, down a cent, while the U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures settled at $80.15 a barrel, up by 2 cents. The Brent benchmark had dropped 2.3% and WTI futures slipped 1.8% in Tuesday’s session after data showed U.S. business activity contracted in January for the seventh straight month, raising concerns about an economic slowdown. “End of the day here, the market is starting to get a little more anxious about the economy and things along those lines,” Mizuho analyst Robert Yawger said. “Main worry at this point is demand destruction due to an economic slowdown.” WTI prices briefly rose by over $1 per barrel on Wednesday after the Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that U.S. crude inventories rose by 533,000 barrels in the last week to 448...

The United Nations forecast Wednesday that global economic growth will fall significantly to 1.9% this year as a result of the food and energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine, the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, persistently high inflation and the climate emergency. Painting a gloomy and uncertain economic outlook, the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs said the current global economic slowdown “cuts across both developed and developing countries, with many facing risks of recession in 2023.” “A broad-based and severe slowdown of the global economy looms large amid high inflation, aggressive monetary tightening, and heightened uncertainties,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the 178-page report. The report said this year’s 1.9% economic growth forecast – down from an estimated 3% in 2022 – is one of the lowest growth rates in recent decades. But it projects a moderate pick-up to 2.7% in 2024 if inflation gradually abates and econ...