Financial Post, Author At ValueWalk

How Activist Hedge Funds ‘On Steroids’ Have Become A Boardroom Enemy

Bill Ackman was running late for the conference. The private jet carrying the billion-dollar New York activist investor to Canada was in a queue at the Toronto airport. No matter. The hundreds of Bay Street businesspeople and reporters who crowded into the main conference room at the Toronto Board of Trade in mid October were almost…

Couple With $1.6-Million In Assets Worry Another Market Meltdown Could Derail Their Retirement

This article appears in the November edition of the Financial Post Magazine. Visit the iTunes store to download the iPad edition of this month’s issue. Max Loertschild, 60, and his wife, Laura, 56, seem to be thriving in British Columbia. He is a management consultant with a $5,528 monthly take-home income, while she is a health-care…

Sears Canada In It For The Long-Run, Says New CEO [The Fourth In Three Years]

TORONTO – The new CEO of Sears Canada wants to make it clear: the department store chain is not dead, and rumours about its inevitable demise are baseless. Mike Myers’ pitch for a flagging retailer: ‘Sears Canada. My brother works there’ Add comedian Mike Myers to the list of people who want to save Sears Canada.…

Canada could become the only country in the world with two yuan trading hubs

What could be better than the news that Canada has secured a yuan trading hub? Perhaps the possibility that it could be getting two – one in Toronto and another in Vancouver. As the National Post reported Tuesday, Stephen Harper is expected to announce during his upcoming trip to China that he has secured a so-called…

Mexico: North America’s last energy frontier is ready to dance

Eagle Ford may be North America’s most prolific shale gas basin with more than 8,000 wells drilled in the region. By contrast its Mexican cousin, Burgos basin, just across the border, has barely seen any action. But that may soon change. In a span of just two years since his 2012 election as Mexican president, Enrique…

Another foreign financial player set to enter Canada via acquisition

For the second time in about six weeks, a foreign financial player has entered the Canadian market. But rather than build from the ground up, the financial players, Spanish in one case and French in the other, have made their entry through the acquisition of an established player. In mid-September, Banco Santander, S.A. announced the $298-million…

Canadian Boardrooms Ready To Deploy New Defence Tactic To Thwart Activists

A new corporate defence has begun to emerge in Canada that could gain traction as activist investors continue to target companies and push for change. So-called “voting pills” have been adopted by a handful of companies, and they seek to block or at least slow down investors who team up to challenge a board of directors…

Breaking up isn’t hard to do: Why divestitures are all the rage right now

Carl Icahn’s very public battle with eBay Inc. chief executive John Donahoe over the spinoff of the e-commerce giant’s PayPal unit made for great theatre earlier this year, with the U.S. billionaire investor at one point noting that eBay had the worst corporate governance he’d ever seen. Mr. Icahn, of course, got his way this past…

Agrium Inc. targeted by another activist investor

For Agrium Inc., this is déjà vu. Just 18 months after the company fended off an assault from activist shareholder Jana Partners LLC, it is now in the crosshairs of an even bigger U.S. activist. ValueAct Capital Management LP revealed in a filing on Friday that it has acquired almost 8.2 million Agrium shares, or 5.7%…

Canadians May Be ‘Buying Too Much Car’: Moody’s Sounds Alarm On Bank Auto Loans

Much of the focus on ballooning consumer debt has been tied to housing, but a new report from Moody’s Investors Service points to troubling trends when it comes to buying cars. Bank of Canada bids farewell to forward guidance, leaving the market to work things out on its own Comment: Stephen Poloz is frustrated with the…

A Tale Of Two Bermuda Reinsurers

This is a tale of two Bermuda-based reinsurance companies, both of which made plans over the past six months to get listed in Canada. Only one was successful. First, Aurigen Capital, which had Canadian sponsors, tried to go public in the traditional manner, namely selling of shares through an initial offering. It sought $250-million and a…

Could Sears’ Real Estate Deal With U.K.’s Primark Come To Its Canadian Stores Too?

TORONTO • Edward Lampert is taking a page out of Richard Baker’s playbook, and it’s one that could pave the way for U.K. fast fashion retailer Primark to enter Canada. Sears Canada ‘tragedy’ seen as victim of overreach by U.S. hedge fund tycoon Edward Lampert Mark Cohen, a former chairman and CEO of Sears Canada Inc.,…

Canadian Chamber of Commerce joins call for yuan trading hub to help increase exports to China

Canada could generate up to $32-billion more in exports over the next 10 years if it creates a yuan trading hub to do business in the world’s fastest growing currency, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said in a new report. Why Canada needs a renminbi trading hub now Because of the size of our domestic market,…

Rail Consolidation Could ‘meaningfully’ Improve Industry Efficiency, Bill Ackman Says

The war of words over a takeover offer that no one will acknowledge publicly and may never get off the ground continued on Thursday, with Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. director Bill Ackman saying rail consolidation could “meaningfully” improve industry efficiency. Mr. Ackman’s comments came on the heels of a Wall Street Journal report that CP approached…

David Rosenberg: Don’t Panic, We’re Already 85% Through The Correction

The first thing to do is tally up the damage to date and then provide some perspective. The major averages have by now all broken key support levels. That much we know. Three years of unusual calm are being mean-reverted by three weeks of unusual volatility. Ten reasons to be bullish on the global economy in…

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