Trust never sleeps
It’s been a tough seven months for Canada’s pipeline companies on the stakeholder management front. In April, the Obama administration announced it was delaying a decision to approve TransCanada...
View ArticleThe bubble in the room
Regardless of what industry you’re talking about, ExxonMobil is a towering giant. It is the world’s largest publicly traded oil-and-gas company (in addition to being the world’s third-largest public...
View ArticleIs everybody out there?
When Bombardier Inc. launched the maiden flight of its CSeries jet last September, the company broadcast the three-hour-plus event in a live, bilingual webcast that was more Canada AM than a...
View ArticleHow to build a pharma giant [and win friends and incite critics]
Michael Pearson is a divisive figure. To some, he’s shaking up an industry—big pharma—that needed to be rocked to its core, that had become bloated and fat, reliant on spending billions on research and...
View ArticleThe elephant in the room
Rudi Fronk is back on the road. The smooth-talking 56-year-old CEO and chairman of Toronto-based Seabridge Gold Inc. (TSX:SEA) is in the midst of a month-long travel itinerary that will take him to...
View ArticleCyber risk takes centre stage
When Doug Hayhurst traveled on company business in the 1980s, the former IBM and PwC executive used a briefcase with no corporate logo when visiting certain jurisdictions so as not to attract...
View ArticleMoney talks, excessive pay walks
One of the distinguishing traits of a good board of directors is they try to be prepared, so they’re always looking ahead, craning their necks to figure out what’s coming around the next bend. Back in...
View ArticleBig, bold and bountiful
Canada’s mergers and acquisition markets were on fire in 2014, hitting some of the highest levels since the financial crisis. What fueled such activity? Low interest rates, a stock market that didn’t...
View ArticleOnce repatriated, twice shy
They weren’t looking for it, were not expecting it, and it initially elicited as much interest as a day-old cruller. But Tim Hortons Inc.’s takeover by fast-food giant Burger King Worldwide Inc. is...
View ArticleDeets from above
Hearing lawyer Richard Butler describe it, one imagines only two things were missing in the airborne claim-staking blitz that KWG Resources Inc. (TSX-V:KWG) unleashed on unsuspecting rival Noront...
View ArticleRipples on the land
The long-awaited decision came down on June 26, 2014. By a unanimous 8-0 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada granted declaration of aboriginal title to more than 1,700 square kilometres of land in...
View ArticleMining’s last, best good news story
“Please stay tuned, we should have a very good fourth quarter.” Randy Smallwood signs off Silver Wheaton Corp.’s (TSX:SLW) most recent quarterly conference call with investment analysts from the major...
View ArticleNo director left behind
Ask Gwyn Morgan what he thinks about continuing education programs for company directors and the corporate titan has mixed feelings. On one hand, Morgan, the former CEO and president of Encana Corp....
View ArticlePayback
Grant Edey was getting set to trek into town from his home on the outskirts of Toronto when the e-mail landed in his inbox. It was day one of the annual Prospectors and Developers Association’s PDAC...
View ArticleThe stock heard ’round the world
An initial public offering is a kind of coming-out party, the moment when the rest of the world decides if it likes your business. As a chief executive you pray that the market sees the same things in...
View ArticleDecisions! Decisions!
The environment in which publicly traded companies operate is shaped by everything from the competitive landscape to rules and regulations set by governments. However, often it is court rulings that...
View ArticleBullets over Bay Street
Disrupter. Provocateur. Innovator. Call him what you will, Jos Schmitt is in a familiar position and it’s clear from his tone that he relishes the role. It’s been several months since Schmitt, as...
View ArticleOversight means line of sight
While executive pay probably still commands the most public attention among hot-button governance issues, for the majority of directors and executives, risk is now its equal among top priorities....
View ArticleProxy season: Pressure on all sides
When Denison Mines Corp. (TSX:DML) announced plans to acquire Fission Uranium Corp. (TSX:FCU) back in July, all seemed set to go. The boards of both companies approved the transaction, the regulators...
View ArticleOur Deal of the Year short list
First runner-up: Brookfield Asset Management If you’re judging a body of work, Brookfield’s hard to beat. Led by CEO Bruce Flatt, no other company, or group of companies, did more big deals in 2015....
View ArticleDeal of the Year: Toronto two-step
It’s about the relationships. Like a good marriage or a long-standing friendship, Steve Hudson says his business was developed over dinners and over coffee. It is about keeping his financiers attuned...
View ArticleM&A 2015: Canada shops the world
The 2015 Canadian mergers and acquisitions market will be remembered as a year when domestic organizations went on an international buying spree, despite a dollar that was less than robust. Everyone...
View ArticleAn uneasy duty
In November 2015, closing arguments were heard in a lawsuit that may have important consequences for the Canadian mining industry. Northern Superior Resources Inc. (TSX-V:SUP), a Sudbury, Ont.-based...
View ArticleFive ways to someday
Michael Johnston says one thing he has learned in his 20-plus years of mining is that “you can’t manufacture grade. The ore body is what it is. Generally, it is something you have very little control...
View ArticleThe end of coal?
It has been a brutal quarter for Teck Resources Ltd. (TSX:TCK.B) and Don Lindsay, the chief executive, speaking on a scheduled earnings call with analysts in late October was doing his best to put a...
View ArticleSomething new under the sun
The sprawling, low-rise industrial building in a business park on the outskirts of Guelph, Ont., about an hour’s drive west of Toronto, is pretty much indistinguishable from its neighbours, except for...
View ArticleYou gotta own it
Nancy Hopkins has witnessed shifts in a company’s culture firsthand. A lawyer at McDougall Gauley in Saskatoon, Hopkins was a female pioneer almost a quarter-century ago when she took a posting to the...
View ArticleNow heed this!
Welcome to Listed’s annual ranking of the six most important Canadian high court rulings from the past year. This exclusive selection, based on an informal survey of top Canadian lawyers and legal...
View ArticleIs your board MIA on HR?
It is a time-honoured adage that CEOs often repeat: “People are our greatest asset,” but is it more than talk? Probably not. Research confirms the adage, showing a linkage between superior human...
View ArticleEmbracing the F-word
Somewhere in an office in downtown Toronto, standing beside a ping-pong table, young engineers and software developers in jeans arrange multicoloured sticky notes on whiteboards outlining the next...
View ArticleBeware the weakest link
When the world’s seventh-largest container shipping line, Hanjin Shipping Co., filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of August, it left retailers, manufacturers and resource companies around the...
View ArticleThe bottom line comes full circle
“History will judge today’s effort as pivotal,” said U.S. president Barack Obama, as he and Xi Jingping, the president of China, ratified the Paris climate accord in early September. If the comments...
View ArticleLocking up the vote
On the eve of a special shareholders’ meeting last May by Taseko Mines Ltd. (TSX:TKO), activist shareholder Raging River Capital LP threw in the towel. The firm, created for the sole purpose of...
View ArticleA lower loonie still goes a long way
While there are many ways to evaluate this year’s mergers and acquisitions activity as the calendar draws to a close, it’s hard not to declare 2016 as a year for building Canadian power abroad. The...
View ArticleOur Deal of the Year short list
FIRST RUNNER-UP Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. If Enbridge’s Spectra purchase wasn’t such a monster deal in a difficult sector, Alimentation Couche-Tard’s (TSX:ATD.B) $5.5-billion outlay for CST Brands...
View ArticleBetter a buyer than a builder be?
Al Monaco had been planning something big for years. All the indicators were there. After all, Monaco, who became chief executive of energy giant Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB) in 2012, announced last year...
View ArticleBig offset on the Prairie
A two-square-kilometre (200-hectare) mine site might not sound massive. But when its construction is earmarked for one of the world’s most threatened ecosystems—the moist mixed grasslands of central...
View ArticleThe great white hope
Gambling in Nevada is typically conducted in Las Vegas or Reno, but there is now an entirely new type of gambling taking place in a bleak, sun-blasted valley located midway between these two cities....
View ArticleCool, calm and calculated
David Garofalo isn’t the type to get easily excited. Just back from Davos, the annual schmooze-fest in the Alps for movers and shakers of the world, the chief executive of Vancouver-based Goldcorp Inc....
View ArticleGrowing like weed
New York hedge fund managers pride themselves on being able to spot big moneymaking opportunities long before anyone else. But somehow they failed to notice Bruce Linton when he travelled to Manhattan...
View ArticlePutting the force in enforcement
Barring negotiated settlements, most of Canada’s securities enforcement community will be consumed this fall with the prosecution of several related high-profile cases alleging insider trading of...
View ArticleRulings pt. 2: More orders from the court
STEWART V. ELK VALLEY COAL CORP. COURT Supreme Court of Canada ISSUE Limits on enforcement of workplace fitness for duty policies When can employees who test positive for illegal drugs be dismissed...
View ArticleRulings of engagement
The Supreme Court of Canada has once again had a busy year with a number of rulings that impact the business world. Over the past 12 months, the court has ruled on everything from when companies can...
View ArticleArtificial intelligence gets real
When Jordan Jacobs approached former TD Bank Group CEO Ed Clark in late 2016 with the idea to fundraise for a world-leading artificial intelligence research facility, he found a willing and motivated...
View ArticleBeating back trouble
As crisis moments go, the announcement by Home Capital Group Inc. (TSX:HCG) last Feb. 10 that it had received an enforcement notice from the Ontario Securities Commission calling out its 2014 and 2015...
View ArticleOur 2017 DOTY shortlist
FIRST RUNNER-UP Metro Inc.-Jean Coutu Group Inc. When you consider the other recent grocery store-pharmacy tie-ups (most notably, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. buying Shoppers Drug Mart back in 2013), Metro Inc.’s...
View ArticleCover all the bases
What’s in store for the 2018 proxy season? We asked some of Canada’s leading proxy experts and governance advisers for their help. Below, they identify the issues that are expected to make headlines...
View ArticleTwo sides of the same story
Listed To what extent is Manulife’s shareholder engagement focused on proxy season? Richard DeWolfe A year ago it was a very significant effort on our part because one of the issues that we were...
View ArticleTo the stealthy go the spoils
Canada’s mergers and acquisitions market in 2017 can best be described as stealth-like. On the surface, it didn’t seem like it was an exceptional year. Sure there were some notable deals, such as...
View ArticleThe comeback after the storm
No one would be startled to find out Neil Bruce is an engineer by training. He has the perspective one anticipates from an engineer—the attitude that a problem can be solved by simply working it...
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