The range in which the tightly controlled yuan is allowed to fluctuate against the dollar each day will double in size, though to a still relatively narrow 2 per cent.

The move was widely expected after Premier Li Keqiang promised in an annual policy speech last week to give market forces a “decisive role” in allocating credit and other resources in the state-dominated economy.

The ruling Communist Party says it wants to inject more competition into the economy and nurture self-sustaining growth based on domestic consumption instead of trade and investment.

In a steady drumbeat of recent changes, authorities also have announced plans to create China’s first privately financed banks and promised to ease the tax and regulatory burden on entrepreneurs.

Widening the trading band will help to “optimize the efficiency of capital allocation and market allocation of resources to accelerate economic development,” said a central bank statement.

China’s rapid economic growth tumbled to a two-decade low of 7.7 per cent last year. This year’s official growth target is slightly lower at 7.5 per cent, but Li said this week Beijing will be flexible about it as long as the economy generates enough new jobs.

Washington and other governments complain Beijing suppresses the value of the yuan, unfairly making Chinese exports cheaper abroad and hurting foreign competitors.

The relatively small size of Saturday’s change appeared unlikely to mollify Beijing’s foreign critics. Some U.S. lawmakers have demanded punitive tariffs on Chinese goods if Beijing failed to ease controls, but the White House has resisted imposing sanctions.

Beijing reported a $260 billion global trade surplus last year, a $30 billion increase over 2012 and among the largest ever recorded by any country.

Chinese leaders say they plan eventually to let the yuan float freely, but private sector analysts say that might be decades away.

Beijing is reluctant to allow big changes in the currency for fear of hurting exporters that employ millions of workers. But analysts say they might have gained confidence from recent strong trade performance.

Allowing the yuan to rise in value would increase the buying power of Chinese households, helping to achieve the ruling party’s goal of nurturing more sustainable economic growth based on domestic consumption instead of trade and investment.

A stronger yuan also could help to suppress pressure for politically sensitive consumer prices to rise by making imports cheaper.

Reform advocates say that by suppressing the yuan’s value, Beijing has been forcing even poor households to subsidize exporters.

In recent weeks, the central bank has been guiding the yuan’s exchange lower against the dollar in what analysts said was an effort to discourage speculators who are moving money into China to profit from the currency’s rise.

Beijing allowed the yuan to gain about 20 per cent against the dollar beginning in 2005 but movement stopped after the 2008 global crisis as the government tried to protect struggling exporters.

The yuan has been trading at about six to the dollar. Analysts say Beijing might allow that to rise to 5.88 to the dollar by mid-2014, a rise of about 2 per cent. That would be small by global currency market standards but unusually large for China.

___

Online:

People’s Bank of China (in Chinese): www.pbc.gov.cn

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But the tourist, Falko Tillwich, was insistent. “I said absolutely not … no way,” he recalled, and later handed over his driver’s license instead.

Tillwich’s concern: losing vital travel documents, or worse — having them stolen by criminal syndicates that are exploiting lax law enforcement and corrupt police here to support a global network of human smugglers, fugitives and sometimes, terrorists.

Those worries were heightened this week after investigations into Malaysian jetliner that went missing March 8 with 239 people aboard revealed two Iranian citizens had boarded the flight with passports stolen from tourists in Thailand.

Investigators say it was unlikely the two men had links to terrorism and appeared to be illegal migrants trying to get to Europe. However, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said Saturday authorities were re-examining the list of crew and passengers after deciding the plane had deliberately changed course after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on the way to Beijing.

Passport theft is “a very big and critical problem in Thailand,” said police Maj. Gen. Apichart Suribunya, who serves as Thailand’s Interpol director. “It is a problem that Interpol, the United Nations and the international community have been trying to solve for years.”

So far, with limited success.

Thailand’s sapphire blue waters, wildlife parks, delicious cuisine and raunchy red light districts have attracted tourists for decades. Last year alone, 22 million foreign visitors made the trip. That means “there are more passports to steal in Thailand than other countries in the region,” said Clive Williams, a counterterrorism expert at Australia’s Macquarie University.

Phuket is one of Thailand’s tourism honeypots. Tourists flock here in droves each year for its sun, sand and laid back ambience. And some, like Italian Luigi Maraldi, lose their passports along the way.

Maraldi hired a hired a motorbike on Phuket last year. When he returned to the shop to retrieve his passport, he was told it had been given away to someone who looked like him.

His passport, along with another stolen in Phuket two years earlier, was used to board the ill-fated flight undetected, revealing startling shortcomings in the security of international travel.

Interpol says it maintains a global database of 40 million lost or stolen travel documents, but only a handful of countries actually check it before allowing passengers aboard flights. Malaysia and Thailand are not among them.

Apichart said accessing the database is not complicated, but Thai authorities use it only when travellers are deemed suspicious. It can also be time-consuming, he said, and the government has been keen to facilitate the lucrative tourism industry and ensure immigration lines aren’t clogged.

“This is something we have to rethink,” Apichart said.

The global intelligence company Stratfor said that passport fraud is common among human traffickers, drug smugglers, arms merchants, money launderers, fugitives and pedophiles — many of whom end up in Thailand. “Only a very small percentage,” of those involved in the underground trade have terror links, Stratfor said.

Nevertheless, the threat remains a concern. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Thailand — under pressure from Western governments — vowed to crack down.

In 2004, police arrested a Bangladeshi who allegedly supplied forged passports to al-Qaida-linked terrorists, including the mastermind of the 2002 Bali attacks. In 2010, authorities nabbed Pakistani Muhammad Butt, who police believe provided false passports to suspects in the Madrid train bombings.

Two years later, Thai officers arrested Parknejed Seyed Ramin for alleged involvement in a passport racket that was thought to have aided suspects in a bomb plot discovered in Bangkok on Valentine’s Day the same year. Police said Ramin’s gang had been running a lucrative, 5-year-old forgery business worth millions of dollars.

Governments like the United States have fought back by embedding digital chips inside passports that contain a photo of the passport holder and information about the owner. Stratfor said that has made it tougher to alter photos, but chips can still be hacked.

In Thailand, passport forgers now use advanced technology, and their clients can evade capture by selling them to lookalikes who resemble the owners.

A senior Thai intelligence official, who has spent years hunting down passport theft rings, said investigators are currently tracking about 10 major syndicates in Thailand.

Most were run by nationals from Pakistan, India, Iran or Central Asia he said, for clients that are mostly illegal migrants. The fact that travel documents are often stolen or forged in one country and used in another, though, “makes it hard for the governments to follow and arrest them,” he said.

In Phuket this week, police called meetings with dozens of owners of motorbike rental shops and told them to take copies of passports instead of the originals. It was unclear, though, how or whether they would enforce it.

___

Associated Press writer Todd Pitman contributed to this report from Bangkok.

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Improbable but not impossible, experts say.

With the search for the missing airliner entering its eighth day, scenarios involving piracy or hijacking are increasingly being talked about as possible explanations for the disappearance of the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board.

Authorities say they’re not ruling out other theories, which include a catastrophic structural failure causing the plane to break up, engine failure, or pilot suicide. But a U.S. official gave an intriguing twist to the story Friday by saying that investigators are considering whether the plane’s disappearance was due to “an act of piracy” and whether the big jet might have landed somewhere without being detected.

A takeover of the plane seemed to be ruled out a few days ago, when officials discounted any link between terrorism and two passengers who were travelling on fake passports. The piracy theory, however, gained new life when it was reported that the plane’s transponders had been turned off, making it more stealthy; and that signals from the plane indicated that it kept flying for several hours after the last radio contact, possibly turning west toward the Indian Ocean.

Scott Shankland, an American Airlines pilot who spent several years as a co-pilot on Boeing 777s, said a captain would know how to disable radios and the plane’s other tracking systems. But a hijacker, even one trained to fly a plane, “would probably be hunting and pecking quite a while — ‘Do I pull this switch? Do I pull that?’ You could disable a great deal” of the tracking equipment, “but possibly not all of it.”

Some of the plane’s data is transmitted automatically from equipment not located in the cockpit, making it even harder to avoid leaving electronic bread crumbs, he said.

John Hansman, an aeronautics professor at MIT who is familiar with the Boeing 777, said it would be possible for an intruder to turn off the transponders, but knowing how to shut down other systems in a bid to be stealthy would be more difficult. Even if 9-11-style hijackers got that far, he said, they would be challenged to keep flying, make a successful landing, and hide the plane.

“If it was a hijacking, it was probably a hijacking gone bad,” he said.

Instead, Hansman thinks that there could have been a cascading series of malfunctions or a fire that shut down key systems on the plane and incapacitated the pilots. He compared it to the 1999 crash in South Dakota of a Learjet carrying pro golfer Payne Stewart.

Air traffic controllers couldn’t contact the crew shortly after the Learjet took off from Florida; pilots in other planes saw no movement in the cockpit; and eventually the jet ran out of fuel. The National Transportation Safety Board ruled that the crash probably was caused by the pilots passing out for lack of oxygen after a loss of cabin pressure.

Without any wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, it’s hard to dismiss any theory. A week after the plane left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing, it remains a mystery how a jet with a good safety record and flying in clear weather could just disappear without even a distress call. And without being spotted by radar.

If it was a hijacking, “they would have to be somebody who has detailed knowledge of the plane,” said Alan Diehl, a former NTSB crash investigator. “Could they get down below the radar and make a beeline to an abandoned airstrip somewhere? I suppose the short answer is yes. Even today, satellites don’t cover every square kilometre of the Earth.”

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“While I won’t be running for Governor of New York State, a race I would have won,” he posted on Twitter, “I have much bigger plans in mind- stay tuned, will happen!”

The executive vice-president of the Trump Organization and special counsel to Trump, Michael Cohen, confirmed that Trump will not run but said he could not elaborate on Trump’s bigger plans.

Trump had been flirting with challenging Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo for a few months, but he had said he would run only if he faced no rival for the Republican nomination.

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino announced this month that he will seek the Republican nomination for governor.

Trump said on Twitter that the New York Republican Party “can’t unify.” He tweeted, “The top leadership of the New York State Republican Party is totally dysfunctional – they haven’t won a major election in many years.”

New York Republican State Committee spokesman David Laska said, “We’re sorry that he won’t be bringing his talents to the gubernatorial race this year, but we respect his decision.”

An Astorino campaign spokeswoman said, “We’re grateful for his past support and look forward to following his future endeavours.”

Trump has toyed with running for office several times. He briefly discussed running for governor of New York in 2006 and talked about White House bids in 2000, 2004 and 2008 before pulling the plug every time.

He made his most substantial move toward running for president in 2012, giving speeches to a number of Republican groups and questioning whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

Several of New York’s Republican county leaders had been courting Trump to challenge Cuomo in November. Supporters see him as having the name recognition and money needed to successfully challenge Cuomo.

Potential voters favoured Cuomo over Astorino by 63 per cent to 28 per cent in a Quinnipiac University poll released last month before Astorino formally entered the race. Cuomo’s lead over Trump was 63 per cent to 26 per cent in the poll.

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The decision announced Friday begins a long-planned transition affecting the stewardship of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN. That’s a not-for-profit agency launched in 1998 by the U.S. Commerce Department to govern the system that assigns website addresses and directs Internet traffic.

Although other countries have had a say in how the Internet is run, the U.S. government retained veto power over ICANN.

The Commerce Department hopes to end its ICANN oversight by the time its contract expires in September 2015.

Proposals for a new ICANN stewardship will be accepted beginning next week at a conference in Singapore.

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Weibo was launched four years ago by parent company Sina as a microblogging service. The Twitter-like service allows users to post a feed of up to 140 Chinese characters to share with others, as well as attaching multimedia or other longer-form content to their post.

The company has 61.4 million average daily active users, according to its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Weibo has not determined the exact scope of its offering of American depository shares. Its filing indicates that it plans to raise $500 million, but that is an estimate worked out solely for the purposes of calculating registration fees and may change.

It plans to list its stock on the Nasdaq exchange. The company is incorporated in the Cayman Islands but conducts business in China.

Weibo plans to use proceeds from the offering to repay loans to Sina, which is a majority owner, and invest the rest in its business. Alibaba Group invested in the company in 2013 and has an 18 per cent stake in Weibo.

Weibo company has posted a loss for its last three years, which has narrowed gradually each year on increasing revenue.

Shares of Sina Corp. added 6.1 per cent, or $3.96, to $68.55 in after-hours trading.

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Tim LeClair, president and CEO of Saskatoon Regional Economic Development Authority, faces multiple charges for not filing a tax return from 2003 to 2011.

Each charge could carry a fine ranging from $1,000 to $25,000 or up to 12 months in jail.

A lawyer says charges of failure to file do not result in a criminal record, and in most cases the Crown will settle for a lesser charge, amalgamating some of the charges if the accused enters a guilty plea.

LeClair is scheduled to appear in provincial court on May 15.

(CKOM)

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Toronto Stock Exchange (14,227.66 down 17.48 points):

Fortis Inc. (TSX:FTS.IR). Utilities. Up 35 cents, or 1.07 per cent, to $33.00 on 31.7 million shares.

Carpathian Gold Inc. (TSX:CPN). Miner. Down 0.5 cents, or 14.29 per cent, to three cents on 7.4 million shares.

B2Gold Corp. (TSX:BTO). Miner. Down 12 cents, or 3.38 per cent, to $3.43 on 6.5 million shares.

Eastern Platinum Ltd. (TSX:ELR). Miner. Unchanged at 7.5 cents on 5.7 million shares.

Bombardier Inc. (TSX:BBD.B). Aerospace. Up five cents, or 1.29 per cent, to $3.92 on 5.5 million shares.

Trican Well Service Ltd. (TSX:TCW). Oil and gas. Down 55 cents, or 4.27 per cent, to $12.33 on 5.4 million shares.

Toronto Venture Exchange (1,033.64 up 1.53 points):

Panoro Minerals Ltd. (TSXV:PML). Miner. Unchanged at 28 cents on 10.1 million shares.

Africa Hydrocarbons Inc. (TSXV:NFK). Oil and gas. Down 2.5 cents, or 16.13 per cent, to 13 cents on 6.3 million shares.

Companies reporting major news:

Athabasca Oil Corp. (TSX:ATH). Oil and gas. Down five cents, or 0.60 per cent, to $8.34 on 1.1 million shares. William Gallacher, founder and chairman of the company, announced he was stepping down a day after its Dover oilsands project received a long-awaited green light from the Alberta government. Once all approvals are in hand, PetroChina, currently with a 60 per cent stake in the project, has 30 days to exercise its option to buy out Athabasca’s 40 per cent interest for $1.3 billion — which would be a much-needed cash infusion for Athabasca.

Stella-Jones Inc. (TSX:SJ). Forest products. Up 56 cents, or 2.07 per cent, to $27.60 on 79,021 shares. The stock went up even though the company missed analyst estimates on both earnings per share and revenue as it raise the quarterly dividend 40 per cent amid expectations that demand for its core products will remain healthy.

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Microsoft, which took a 6.8 per cent stake in the Nook unit in 2012, agreed to an updated revenue sharing plan with Barnes & Noble. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday, Barnes & Noble said it will discontinue distributing the Nook Windows app and will instead co-operate with Microsoft to transition users to the Microsoft Consumer Reader.

Speculation has been running high about what Barnes & Noble plans for the future of Nook. The New York bookstore chain has invested heavily in its e-book and e-book reader unit, but the unit has not been profitable. Still, Barnes & Noble has said it plans to launch a new Nook e-reader in coming months.

An investment firm offered to buy 51 per cent of the company for about $672 million earlier this month, with plans to spin off Nook, but Barnes & Noble rebuffed that offer.

In its most recent third quarter, Barnes & Noble reported a profit as cost cuts at its Nook unit and elsewhere helped offset declining revenue across all of its businesses. Revenue fell 10 per cent to $2 billion, from $2.22 billion last year.

Shares in Barnes & Noble Inc. rose 15 cents to close at $21.55 on Friday. The stock has jumped 44 per cent since the beginning of the year.

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Target says it ignored early signs of data breach

NEW YORK (AP) — Target Corp. said in its annual report that a massive security breach has hurt its image and business, while spawning dozens of legal actions, and it noted that it can’t estimate how big the financial tab will end up being.

The disclosure Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission came as the nation’s second-largest discounter said separately that security software picked up on suspicious activity after a cyberattack was launched, but it decided not to take immediate action

The company continues to grapple with the fallout of its massive breach since it revealed in mid-December that hackers stole credit card numbers and personal data of millions of its customers.

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AP Exclusive: FBI balks at pot background checks

SEATTLE (AP) — The FBI is refusing to run nationwide background checks on people applying to run legal marijuana businesses in Washington state, even though it has conducted similar checks in Colorado.

It’s a discrepancy that illustrates the quandary the Justice Department faces as it allows the states to experiment with regulating a drug that’s long been illegal under federal law.

Washington state has been asking for nearly a year if the FBI would conduct background checks on its applicants, to no avail. The bureau’s refusal raises the possibility that people with troublesome criminal histories could wind up with pot licenses in the state — undermining the department’s own priorities in ensuring that states keep a tight rein on the nascent industry.

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Liberty Media drops bid to buy rest of Sirius

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Liberty Media is dropping its bid to buy the rest of the satellite radio provider Sirius.

The move disclosed late Thursday comes as Liberty Media Corp. takes steps to create two new tracking stock groups for its business. One will be called Liberty Media Group and the other will be Liberty Broadband Group.

Liberty Media said that because of the tracking stock distribution, it is withdrawing its offer for the rest of New York-based Sirius XM Holdings Inc. Liberty Media owns 53 per cent of Sirius stock.

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Quiznos files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection

DENVER (AP) — Quiznos has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to reduce its debt by more than $400 million after the chain lost ground to competitors.

The toasted sandwich company, based in Denver, said Friday that it voluntarily filed to reorganize to implement a pre-packaged restructuring plan.

Quiznos says the move won’t affect its customers. The company only owns and operates seven of the nearly 2,100 Quiznos restaurants. The rest are owned and operated by franchisees and aren’t part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

The company says the restructuring plan has been approved by its creditors so it expects to emerge from reorganization quickly.

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FDIC sues 16 big banks that set key rate

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has sued 16 big banks that set a key global interest rate, accusing them of fraud and conspiring to keep the rate low to enrich themselves.

The banks, which include Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase in the U.S., are among the world’s largest.

The FDIC alleges that the banks rigged the London interbank offered rate, or LIBOR, from August 2007 to at least mid-2011. The LIBOR affects trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages, bonds and consumer loans.

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Retailer Ann eliminating about 100 positions

NEW YORK (AP) — Ann Inc. is eliminating about 100 positions from its corporate workforce, the company announced Friday.

The retailer, whose brands include Ann Taylor and Loft, also gave a weaker-than-expected revenue outlook for the year. But its earnings nearly doubled in the fourth quarter — a period that included the crucial holiday shopping season.

Ann said that the 100 positions being eliminated are a combination of those held by employees and open positions, with most at its New York headquarters. The positions being eliminated represent about 10 per cent of the company’s corporate workforce.

The company said its job cuts are part of a strategic realignment of its business that is expected to result in annual operating savings of about $25 million.

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Revival for Japan’s tsunami wrecked fishing ports

TONI, Japan (AP) — A number of businessmen are trying to bring the fishing industry back to Japan’s northeastern coast, three years after a disastrous tsunami hit.

The government says nearly two-thirds of damaged land has been salvaged and 78 per cent of fishery processing restarted in the region. But for the majority, sales are well below pre-disaster levels. They face an array of obstacles to setting up shop. And most damaged stores and other businesses are operating from temporary quarters such as shipping containers and prefabricated huts.

The 2011 earthquake and tsunami triggered a nuclear disaster that contaminated chunks of the coast with radiation and killed 18,520 people.

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Pinkberry co-founder gets prison in LA assault

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A co-founder of the frozen yogurt chain Pinkberry has been sentenced to seven years in prison for beating a homeless man with a tire iron in Los Angeles.

Forty-nine-year-old Young Lee, who is no longer affiliated with Pinkberry, was sentenced to the maximum term Friday.

A jury convicted Lee of assault with a deadly weapon last November and the judge declared him to be a significant threat to the community.

Prosecutors said Lee confronted the man after the transient flashed a sexually explicit tattoo to several people in Lee’s car, including his fiancee. The man was struck twice on the head and suffered a broken arm before witnesses stopped the attack.

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Rule targets for-profit colleges over student debt

WASHINGTON (AP) — The for-profit college industry says it will vigorously oppose proposed regulations by the Obama administration designed to protect students at for-profit colleges from amassing huge debt they can’t pay off.

The regulations would penalize career-oriented programs that produce graduates without the training needed to find a job with a salary that will allow them to pay off their debt. If finalized, the regulations would take effect in 2016.

Schools, for-profit or not, that don’t comply would lose access to the federal student aid programs.

The industry argues that the regulations would have a long-term impact on the nation’s ability to address workforce demands and improve the economy.

___

By The Associated Press=

The Dow Jones Industrial average slid 43.22 points, or 0.3 per cent, to close at 16,065.67. The S&P 500 index fell 5.21 points, or 0.3 per cent, to close at 1,841.13. The Nasdaq composite dropped 15.02 points, or 0.4 per cent, to 4,245.40.

Benchmark U.S. crude for April delivery rose 69 cents to close at $98.89 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Wholesale gasoline rose 3 cents to $2.96 a gallon. Heating oil rose 2 cents to $2.94 a gallon. Natural gas added 4 cents to $4.43 per 1,000 cubic feet. Brent crude, used to set prices for international varieties of crude, rose $1.18 to $108.57 on the ICE Futures exchange in London.

The post Business Highlights appeared first on Canadian Business.

NYSE

General Motors Co., up 30 cents to $34.09

Despite the upturn, a steady drumbeat of revelations about botched recalls dragged shares of the automaker down almost 10 per cent this week.

Barrick Gold Corp., up 12 cents to $20.91

As Russia mobilizes near the Ukraine border, gold prices are hitting six-month highs near $1,400 per ounce, benefiting miners.

Aeropostale Inc., down $1.47 to $5.83

The retailer hit 52-week lows after losses widened and it cut a financing deal that could give one investor a larger stake.

General Mills Inc., down $1.24 to $49.77

The maker of Cheerios, Yoplait and Betty Crocker issued a weak outlook, citing lower demand for its products in developed markets.

Nasdaq

Liberty Media Corp., up $9.11 to $135.25

The communications and entertainment company controlled by billionaire John Malone dropped its bid to buy the rest of Sirius.

Strayer Education Inc., down 29 cents to $46.03

The White House has proposed rules that could cut federal funding to higher-education training programs based on default rates.

Keurig Green Mountain Inc., up $7.09 to $113.25

The single-serve coffee machine maker cut a new deal with Starbucks ditching an exclusivity clause to give it more flexibility.

Hibbett Sports Inc., down $2.14 to $55.70

Fourth-quarter profits slumped as the sporting goods store saw traffic decline amid fierce winter storms over the holidays.

The post Liberty Media, GM, Barrick Gold and Strayer Education are big market movers appeared first on Canadian Business.

The banks, among the world’s largest and also include Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, are accused by the FDIC of fraud and conspiring to keep the rate low to enrich themselves.

The FDIC says it is seeking to recover losses suffered from the rate manipulation by 10 U.S. banks that failed during the financial crisis and were taken over by the agency.

The civil lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan.

The banks rigged the London interbank offered rate, or Libor, from August 2007 to at least mid-2011, the FDIC alleges. The Libor affects trillions of dollars in contracts around the world, including mortgages, bonds and consumer loans.

A British banking trade group sets the Libor every morning after the 16 international banks submit estimates of what it costs them to borrow. The FDIC also sued that trade group, the British Bankers’ Association.

By submitting false estimates of their borrowing costs used to calculate Libor, the 16 banks “fraudulently and collusively suppressed (the Libor rate), and they did so to their advantage,” the FDIC said in the suit.

Citigroup spokeswoman Danielle Romero-Apsilos, Bank of America spokesman Lawrence Grayson and JPMorgan spokesman Brian Marchiony declined to comment.

Four of the banks — Britain’s Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland, Switzerland’s biggest bank UBS and Rabobank of the Netherlands — have previously paid a total of about $3.6 billion to settle U.S. and European regulators’ charges of rigging the Libor. The banks signed agreements with the U.S. Justice Department that allow them to avoid criminal prosecution if they meet certain conditions.

The process of setting the Libor came under scrutiny after Barclays admitted in June 2012 that it had submitted false information to keep the rate low.

A number of U.S. cities and municipal agencies also have filed suits against banks that set the LIBOR rate. They are seeking damages for losses suffered as a result of an artificially low rate. Local governments hold bonds and other investments whose value is pegged to Libor.

In addition, government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have brought similar suits against many of the banks.

Under a change announced last July, the London-based company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, NYSE Euronext, will take over supervising the setting of Livor from the British Bankers’ Association. The changeover is scheduled to be completed by early next year.

The FDIC asserted in its suit that the banks’ misconduct in setting Libor caused “substantial losses” to the 10 U.S. banks that failed. The amount wasn’t specified. The agency is seeking both economic and punitive damages, to be determined by the court.

The other banks named in the suit are Switzerland’s Credit Suisse, Germany’s Deutsche Bank and Portigon, British banks HSBC and Lloyds, France’s Societe Generale and Japan’s Norinchukin Bank and Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

The post US sues 16 big banks, including Royal Bank, that set key global interest rate appeared first on Canadian Business.

It issued proposed regulations late this week designed to protect students at for-profit colleges from amassing huge debt they can’t pay off. The proposed regulations would penalize career-oriented programs that produce graduates without the training needed to find a job with a salary that will allow them to pay off their debt. The programs covered under the proposed regulations include nearly all programs at for-profit schools, as well as certificate programs at public and private non-profit institutions, such as community colleges, according to the Education Department.

The latest “gainful employment” proposal closely follows those that were struck down in 2012 by a federal judge, but it makes technical changes tailored to the court’s concerns that the benchmarks were arbitrary.

Q: Who goes to for-profit colleges?

A: Students who want training in areas such as nursing, truck driving, culinary arts and auto repair. For-profit colleges have been popular with many non-traditional students — many of whom flocked to them during the economic downturn. They’ve also attracted many veterans. According to the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, about two-thirds of students served by its members are over the age of 24. Half have dependents and almost 40 per cent work full-time while enrolled. Last fall, four-year degree programs at for-profit colleges enrolled 1.3 million students, which was a nearly 10 per cent decrease from a year earlier, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Q: In what ways are for-profit colleges under fire?

A: The proposed regulations are the latest step in a yearslong fight by the Obama administration to improve outcomes and end aggressive recruiting at for-profit colleges.

In addition, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month filed suit against the large, for-profit college chain ITT Educational Services Inc. alleging that it pushed students into high-cost private loans knowing they would likely end in default. The company denied the charges. Richard Cordray, director of the bureau, told reporters that attorneys general in California, Massachusetts, Colorado, New York, and Illinois also are pursuing action against various for-profit institutions.

On Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has investigated the industry.

Q: Why is the sector such a target?

A: The industry has among the highest student loan default rates and lowest graduation rates in higher education. Some veterans’ advocates have accused the industry of aggressively targeting veterans because of their federal GI Bill money. Critics say the schools are a waste of not just the money of students, but of taxpayers who fund the GI Bill and other loan and grant dollars used by a large chunk of students to help pay to attend for-profit colleges. Harkin’s committee found that between 2008 and 2009, more than 1 million students enrolled in colleges reviewed by the committee, but by 2010, half had left school without a certificate or degree.

Q: What’s the other side of the story?

A: Non-profit colleges argue that they provide educational programs to students who have historically been left out of higher education and that the proposed regulations would reduce the educational opportunities for students most in need of the “tailored, flexible and innovative options” they provide. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republicans such as Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, and Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the ranking member of the Senate HELP Committee, issued statements in opposition to the proposed regulations.

One argument used against the proposed regulations is that it’s unfair to target just career-oriented programs in higher education because poor outcomes could be found in other areas of higher education. “If the department’s proposed regulation were applied to all sectors of higher education, many programs all across higher education would fail the arbitrary measure,” said Steve Gunderson, president and CEO of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.

Q: Is there merit to Gunderson’s claim?

A: It’s difficult to gauge because of the limited data publicly available. But work done by Mark Schneider, a former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics who is now president of CollegeMeasures.org, provides some clues. He did an analysis of all bachelor’s degree programs in Texas universities and determined that if the proposed regulations were applied systemwide in Texas, 8 per cent of programs would fail to meet the debt-to-earnings ratio under the proposed regulations three years after students left school. The Texas degree programs that failed to meet the mark were in areas such as multidisciplinary studies, history and biology.

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Associated Press writer Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

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Follow Kimberly Hefling on Twitter: http://twitter.com/khefling

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Chris Murray of AltaCorp Capital says it’s “time to board a world leader in transportation.”

“We believe we are at a trough point in Bombardier aerospace and the start of a (period of continuing) improvement at Bombardier transportation (rail),” he wrote in a report Friday.

Murray set a one-year price target for the Montreal-based transportation company at $5.50 per share. That’s about 40 per cent above current levels and would take the issue slightly above its 52-week high set in October.

Walter Spracklin of RBC Capital Markets also upgraded his outlook and target price. The analyst raised his target price 25 per cent to $5, with an outperform rating.

He said much of the negative news about Bombardier has already been priced into the stock, while the elevated liquidity risk is abating.

“Coupled with progress on the CSeries testing program and an improving sales environment heading into (next summer’s) Farnborough air show, we would be buyers of the Bombardier shares at current valuations,” he wrote, pointing to Air Canada (TSX:AC.B) as a potential buyer heading into the premier air show of the year.

After previously underestimating the market’s appetite for Bombardier’s debt, Spracklin now says the company should be able to raise debt, including a beneficial refinancing of US$1.1 billion in debt maturing in 2016.

Bombardier’s (TSX:BBD.B) shares closed up five cents at C$3.92 Friday on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The manufacturer’s earnings have been volatile for four years because of slowdowns in regional aircraft deliveries, lower business jet orders and challenges on some railway projects that reduced margins.

But Murray expects share-price increases will be driven by earnings growth, increasing confidence with the new CSeries aircraft, long-term cash flows and comfort around Bombardier’s long-term prospects.

By 2015, he expects Bombardier’s pre-tax operating earnings will rise 39 per cent to almost US$1.8 billion, from US$1.3 billion last year.

He forecasts that adjusted earnings will reach 50 cents per share on $21.3 billion of revenue, up from 33 cents on US$18.1 billion in 2013. For this fiscal year, he estimates 39 cents per share in adjusted profits, US$1.5 billion of EBITDA and US$19.7 billion of revenues.

Murray said the CSeries has the potential to be a main driver of earnings growth over the next decade.

Bombardier CEO Pierre Beaudoin has said the US$4.4-billion program will generate US$5 billion to US$8 billion a year in revenues at maturity and help improve overall profitability. Customers have placed 201 firm orders for the CSeries, along with options for 165 more. There are also 81 conditional orders, purchase rights and letters of intent.

Bombardier is expected to provide a full update on the CSeries at an investor day in New York next Thursday, including on the avionics system.

Meanwhile, Bombardier has addressed cost challenges caused by aircraft program delays and tough market conditions by freezing non-union salaries and permanently laying off up to 1,700 employees in its aerospace division, mostly in Montreal.

The moves are designed to offset billions of dollars spent to develop the CSeries, Learjet 85, Global 7000 and 8000, along with plant improvements.

Bombardier has delayed first deliveries of the CS100 until the second half of 2015, with the larger CS300 coming about six months later. The first flight and delivery of the Learjet 85 has also been delayed.

Its business jet segment, which accounts for 54 per cent of aerospace revenues, has also faced challenges as orders for small- and medium-sized aircraft have been hurt by the weakened economy.

Bombardier trails Gulfstream as the second-largest manufacturer of business aircraft in the world based on value, but deliveries are expected to increase as it adds new planes, including the large Global 7000 and 8000 in coming years.

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Under the extension, Augusta shareholders now have until 5 p.m. ET on April 2 to receive 0.315 of a HudBay share for each of their shares.

HudBay says the bid, which Augusta management has rejected as inadequate, represents a 62 per cent premium to the 20-day volume weight average prices of the two issues prior to the offer.

“The waiver of the minimum tender condition affords all Augusta shareholders the opportunity to accept the offer, which would not otherwise have been possible” as a result of efforts to frustrate it by “directors, officers and a small group of unnamed shareholders,” HudBay said Friday.

Vancouver-based Augusta said late last month that shareholders and insiders with about one-third of the company’s equity were rejecting the offer.

It said the offer, which originally valued Augusta at roughly $540 million, failed to recognize the value of the company’s Rosemont copper project in Arizona.

“Rosemont is a high-quality, world-class asset. We will not let HudBay steal this asset with this low-ball bid,” chief executive Gil Clausen said at the time.

HudBay has accused the August board of having been consistently overly optimistic about the Rosemont project and questioned whether the smaller company has the necessary expertise or resources to meet its targets.

“We continue to believe our offer is the most compelling choice for Augusta shareholders and we strongly encourage Augusta shareholders to tender their shares,” HudBay said in a statement.

It said the offer continues to be for all of the outstanding Augusta shares and “is not subject to any due diligence, financing or shareholder vote conditions.”

“Any and all Augusta shares tendered will be taken up and accepted for payment following expiry of the offer, regardless of how many Augusta shares are tendered, assuming the satisfaction or waiver of the remaining customary conditions.”

Meanwhile, HudBay said it plans to submit an application to the British Columbia Securities Commission to cease trade the Augusta shareholder rights plan “in due course.”

On the Toronto Stock Exchange, HudBay shares were down six cents at $8.15 on Friday afternoon, while Augusta stock was down two cents at $3.25.

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The Houston firm said in its weekly report Friday that 1,461 rigs were exploring for oil and 344 for gas. Four were listed as miscellaneous. A year ago there were 1,776 active rigs.

Of the major oil- and gas-producing states, North Dakota gained seven rigs, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas each gained four and Pennsylvania gained one.

Alaska lost three rigs, Kansas lost two and California declined by one. Arkansas, Colorado, Louisiana, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming were unchanged.

The U.S. rig count peaked at 4,530 in 1981 and bottomed at 488 in 1999.

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Forty-nine-year-old Young Lee, who is no longer affiliated with Pinkberry, was sentenced to the maximum term Friday.

A jury convicted Lee of assault with a deadly weapon last November and the judge declared him to be a significant threat to the community.

Prosecutors said Lee confronted Daniel Bolding in June 2011 after the transient flashed a sexually explicit tattoo to several people in Lee’s car, including his fiancee. Lee drove away and came back with another man who’d been in the car and beat Bolding.

Bolding was struck twice on the head and suffered a broken arm before witnesses stopped the attack.

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A day after the federal and British Columbia government’s released a proposal designed to allay the drivers’ concerns, it was unclear whether the strike, which the prime minister warned is threatening the country’s economy, was any closer to a resolution.

Roughly 400 unionized truckers went on strike earlier in the week, joining more than a thousand non-unionized truck drivers who walked off the job last month.

Gavin McGarrigle of Unifor, which represents the unionized truckers, suggested the governments’ proposal, as delivered, may not be enough.

“There are a lot of questions that need to be answered in this document, and there are also some glaring holes,” McGarrigle said in an interview.

“I think we’ll have some serious pointed questions.”

McGarrigle declined to discuss his specific concerns, but he said the union had requested a meeting with federal officials for Friday afternoon.

The United Truckers’ Association of B.C., which represents the non-unionized workers, did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

The governments and the port released details of the 14-point proposal Thursday evening.

Under the proposal, regulated wages would increase within a month, followed by a full review of wages and fuel-surcharge rates by next year. The port has also committed to ending a lawsuit it filed against the truckers and renew suspended licences, so long as those suspensions didn’t involve suspected criminal activity.

The labour dispute has largely focused on issues relating to pay, including the truckers’ wages, the amount of unpaid time they spend waiting for cargo at the container terminals, and allegations that some truckers and shipping companies are undercutting rates.

Peter Xotta, vice-president of operations for Port Metro Vancouver, said the port and its container terminal operators are ready to ramp up operations as soon as the strike ends.

“What we expect to happen is that folks will be reviewing the contents of the commitments and proposals and our view is they will find it largely addresses the concerns that have been raised,” said Xotta.

“Given where we’re at, having lost two weeks of productive capacity, all of the terminals will be doing everything possible to return to normal as quickly as possible.”

Port Metro Vancouver, which is Canada’s largest port, leases government-owned land and terminal space to private operators. The port is made up of a collection of facilities throughout the Vancouver region and the strike has affected the port’s four container terminals.

The striking truckers are not employed directly by Port Metro Vancouver, but rather are typically either independent contractors or sub-contractors working for shipping companies.

The port estimates the strike has affected about $885 million worth of cargo per week.

Trucks transport about half of the containers that move in and out of the port, while the rest are moved by rail. The port has said only about to 10 to 15 of normal truck traffic has been getting through and the situation hadn’t changed on Friday.

Xotta said the port is concerned some customers that may have already found alternate ways to ship their goods into the country might not return.

“The port has thousands of users, and each one of them is assessing their supply chain alternatives,” he said.

“In many cases, when someone tries a new alternative and it’s successful, it kind of sticks.”

Eric Waltz of Terminal Systems Inc., which operates the Deltaport and Vanterm terminals, said the strike has been costly and must end.

“We need trucks to return to full service tonight, tomorrow, tomorrow night, this weekend,” said Waltz.

“If it doesn’t happen that immediately, then we would be challenged with receiving the cargo.”

The port says the strike has predominantly affected shipments destined to local markets in the Vancouver area or B.C.

Some businesses have publicly complained they are being charged hefty fees to store cargo that’s been stuck at the port. Such fees are the responsibility of the terminal operators.

“In this case, we work with each customer individually to see how we can accommodate the costs and have a fair system for picking up the cargo,” said Waltz.

Meanwhile, CN Rail obtained a temporary court injunction Friday that orders striking truckers not to interfere with the company’s operations at a container yard in Surrey, southeast of Vancouver.

The rail company filed a lawsuit earlier in the week seeking a permanent injunction and damages. The lawsuit alleges striking workers have been blocking traffic to the facility and intimidating other drivers.

The union and the truckers’ association have denied any wrongdoing.

___

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The lawsuit targets Mt. Gox and its two owners, Mark Karpeles and Jed McCaleb, as well as one of the largest banks in Japan, according to the notice of action to Ontario Superior Court.

Among other things, the action alleges negligence, breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation — none of which has been proven in any court.

Toronto litigation lawyer Ted Charney said Mt. Gox held an estimated US$465 million in trust for its clients and millions of dollars belonged to Canadian users.

The company has offered no accounting for how much non-bitcoin currency it held or what happened to money that was supposed to have been kept in trust, he said.

“We’re never going to find out what’s going on unless we start a lawsuit because it’s the only way we’re going to get access to the records,” Charney said in an interview.

“It’s really the only way to get the thing going.”

The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange halted all withdrawals early last month, then abruptly shut down. Earlier this week, it filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States.

The online exchange had already filed for bankruptcy in Japan, saying it may have lost bitcoins belonging to 750,000 of its customers.

Karpeles has said computer hackers took advantage of the exchange’s flawed software, a security breach critics said may have persisted for years.

“After this news broke, the price of bitcoins plummeted, creating a disruptive ripple effect that has nearly shut down the industry,” said Friday’s notice of action.

The notice, which provides a summary of the case, gives lawyers a month to file a substantive statement of claim.

Proposed as class representatives are David Joyce, of Toronto, Sancho McCann, of Vancouver, Alexandre Pepin, of Montreal, and Paul Collin, of Calgary. Each claims to be owed various amounts, either in bitcoins or, in Joyce’s case, as much as $24,500 in cash.

The Canadian action also names Mizuho Bank on the grounds that the Japanese financial institution held an account with non-bitcoin currency that was transferred from the personal bank accounts of users to the Mt. Gox exchange.

Charney said his firm is working together with the U.S. lawyers who are pressing a class action south of the border.

According to the Canadian suit, Mt. Gox had contracted to hold all money and digital currency deposits in user accounts.

The national class action seeks to represent Canadians who paid Mt. Gox a fee to trade bitcoins or who had the digital or other currency stored on the exchange when it went offline.

In Dallas on Monday, Mt. Gox lawyers said it needed bankruptcy protection to avoid irreparable damage from a proposed class action filed in Chicago federal court and a suit alleging breach of contract in Seattle.

U.S. lawyers complain the case involves “massive fraud.”

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“We look forward to seeing more and more people take advantage as some of the politics of the thing get drained away, as people start feeling more confident about the website,” the president told WebMD in his latest, less-than-conventional attempt to spread the gospel about the law known by his name.

The president’s remarks were made public as House Republicans held the 51st vote in 38 months to repeal or undermine the law, and the first since they won a fiercely contested election for a House seat in Florida this week in a race that featured health care as an issue. The measure calls for a delay in imposing penalties on individuals who fail to purchase health care under the law.

The vote was 238-181, with all Republicans in favour and all but a dozen Democrats opposed. The bill faces certain death in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

In addition to attacking the president’s health care law, the legislation would overhaul the system for paying doctors and others who treat Medicare patients. By itself, the makeover in the payment system enjoys widespread support among lawmakers in both parties as well as from medical organizations. It is designed to end a cycle of uncertainty that has periodically threatened providers with abrupt cuts in their reimbursements.

Without action by Congress, for example, the fees paid to health professionals who treat Medicare patients is scheduled to drop by 24 per cent on March 31.

Yet the decision by Republicans to combine the change in the payment system with a delay in the penalty for failing to purchase health care meant that even the American Medical Association backed away from the bill. In a statement after the vote, the organization that lobbies on behalf of doctors said it intends to continue working toward legislation that both Congress and Obama could accept.

The political backdrop was unmistakable as Republicans pressed ahead on an issue they hope to ride to a takeover of the Senate and continued control of the House in November.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said opposition to the legislation came from “doctors, insurors and seniors,” yet she added that Republicans decided to “proceed with their reckless partisan antics.”

Rep. Dave Camp, R-Michigan and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said the legislation “breaks the cycle of uncertainty for doctors and their patients, providing permanent relief and improving how Medicare pays doctors.”

Moments after the vote, the House campaign committee attacked Democrats who opposed the measure, saying they chose “to protect Obamacare rather than seniors.”

For his part, Obama played pitchman in a 30-minute interview with WebMD, a self-described leading source of trustworthy and timely information about health care issues. He reeled off the toll-free telephone number for the program and repeatedly urged his listeners to check out its website, now repaired after its woeful debut last fall.

Enrolment for the current year expires on March 31, and administration officials are hoping for a late rush of applications beyond the 4.2 million they claim have already signed up. That is particularly true for younger people, whose health is often good and whose participation therefore helps bring down the cost of coverage for sicker people.

“The number of people who have signed up is large enough that I’m confident the program will be stable,” he said.

“At this point, enough people are signing up that the Affordable Care Act is going to work; the insurance companies will continue to offer these plans.”

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The policy, posted online by the Department of Health and Human Services, takes effect next year and applies to plans offered in the health care law’s new insurance markets. It also covers many — but not all — individual and employer plans offered outside that marketplace.

The administration acted after gays and lesbians complained that they’re not sure how the rules of the new insurance exchanges apply to them — particularly in states that do not recognize same-sex marriage.

The department said it was moving to clarify those rules and make coverage “more accessible and equitable for married same-sex couples.” It’s part of a government-wide effort to codify the rights of same-sex spouses following the Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down the federal Defence of Marriage Act and opening the way for same-sex spouses to receive government benefits.

The new HHS policy says that if an insurance company offers spousal coverage to heterosexual couples, it must also provide that benefit to same-sex couples who were legally married in a jurisdiction that recognizes marriage between people of the same sex.

The administration is urging insurers to voluntarily comply with the same-sex rule right away. It will be a requirement for coverage starting Jan. 1, 2015, or later.

Many large employer plans are already operating under similar rules issued last fall by the Labor Department. These are so-called self-insured plans in which an employer sets aside its own money to cover most of the expected medical costs of workers. Self-insured employers generally hire an insurance company to administer their benefit plan.

The new HHS rules apply instead to plans that are sold directly by insurance companies to individuals and employers, usually small to mid-sized companies.

There are exceptions:

—”Grandfathered” plans that were in existence when the health law passed four years ago and have changed very little since then do not have to offer coverage to same-sex spouses. Those plans, however, represent a dwindling share of the market.

—The new policy does not apply to Medicaid coverage for low-income people. The administration encourages states to offer Medicaid benefits to same-sex spouses, but state authorities have the final say.

Separately, HHS issued another one-month extension for the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, known as PCIP. Patients in the temporary program will now have until April 30 to find a new policy. PCIP was created as a transitional program for people turned down for coverage because of health problems. The law now requires insurers to take all applicants regardless of their medical history.

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Online:

HHS same-sex policy: http://tinyurl.com/m82xwcg

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The company said the money will fund a number of projects including the construction of a new sawmill in Doaktown and a new studwood production line in Chipman.

Jim Irving, the company’s co-CEO, said the government’s new forestry plan that lifts a cap on the amount of softwood it will make available to the forestry industry from Crown land influenced its funding decision.

“The province’s results-based forestry initiative provides the sustainable wood supply to invest and grow jobs,” Irving said in a statement. “We appreciate this vote of confidence in the skill and passion of our mill employees and the hundreds of forestry professionals, harvesters and truckers who work in the woods of rural New Brunswick.”

In all, the money will help generate about 400 full-time and seasonal jobs, Irving said.

The announcement came a day after Irving Pulp and Paper said it plans to spend about $450 million to modernize a mill in Saint John that the company says will help create the full-time equivalent of 600 jobs.

Earlier this week, the New Brunswick government released a 10-year forestry plan that allows companies to harvest an additional 660,000 cubic metres of softwood a year — a hike of 20 per cent from existing levels.

As part of the strategy, the government says it will keep a promise to increase the number of protected natural areas in the province, bringing the total area to 270,000 hectares.

But the Liberal Opposition has questioned whether the amount of money spent on planting and silviculture programs will adequately keep pace with higher harvest levels.

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The toasted sandwich company said Friday that it voluntarily filed to reorganize to implement a pre-packaged restructuring plan.

Quiznos says the move won’t affect its customers.

The company only owns and operates seven of the nearly 2,100 Quiznos restaurants. The rest are owned and operated by franchisees and aren’t part of the bankruptcy proceedings.

Quiznos also says its distribution centres are open and fulfilling orders.

Quiznos, founded in 1981, says the restructuring plan has been approved by its creditors so it expects to emerge from reorganization quickly.

Darren Tristano, executive vice-president at Technomic, Inc., a food industry consulting firm, said Quiznos operates in a crowded field where other “fast casual” choices for consumers include Jimmy Johns, Firehouse and Jersey Mike’s. All were hurt by the recession, but Quiznos had added pressure from franchisees, several of whom have filed lawsuits accusing the company of putting corporate profits ahead of the concerns of franchise owners.

In a statement about its Chapter 11 filing, Quiznos CEO Stuart Mathis said the company was taking steps to support franchisees that included reducing food costs and making loans available to some franchise owners for restaurant improvements.

Tristano said that while Quiznos might be able to slow its decline, the chances of returning to its heyday, when more than 4,000 Quiznos restaurants were operating, are slim.

“There’s too much competition,” Tristano said.

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If there’s one U.S. store that most Canadians have likely visited it’s Macy’s, the all-encompassing department store that seems to have a sale on every day. While it may be a great place to buy something on the (relatively) cheap, it’s possible to make some money off the company too.

Over the last 12 months, Macy’s Inc.’s stock (NYSE: M) has climbed by 40%. If its fourth quarter performance can continue into the future, then it’s likely those returns will get even better.

On Feb. 25, it was revealed that the store’s fourth quarter earnings per share came in at $2.31, up 12.7% from the same time last year and beating analyst estimates by $0.14. Net income also climbed by 11% year-over-year. Revenues did decline by 1.6%, but annual profit rose 11% from the year before to $1.5 billion.

Richard Jaffe, an analyst with Stifel, points out that Macy’s results are that much more impressive because retail has been a challenging environment lately.

The company has taken a lot of steps to stay ahead of the game. It’s undergoing a big cost-cutting operation. It’s already closed hundreds of stores and it’s continuing to find ways to save $100 million a year.

It is expected that 1,800 people will be laid off and more store closures are coming. That may sound bad, but Jaffe says it’s good for investors.

“We believe the cost cutting initiative will improve productivity in the organization and will help to drive earnings growth,” he wrote in a Feb. 25 report.

One reason why its equity has climbed is that it’s buying back shares. In 2013, it repurchased 33.6 million shares for $1.6 billion. That should continue.

“We believe continued share repurchase reflects management’s ongoing confidence in the business and its strong cash flow,” writes Jaffe. “We also anticipate the buyback will continue apace as part of management’s ongoing efforts to enhance shareholder value.”

He’s also bullish on the company’s licensing arrangements. It allows other brands, such as Sunglass Hut and Finish Line, to set up shop in its stores, which helps diversify its product lineup and drives people to other parts of the building.

“This strategy is a positive because it enhances the product assortment in stores (better brands and product) with very little risk associated with operating them,” he writes.

Thanks to this, and other initiatives it’s working on, he thinks EPS will grow by 11.25% in 2014 over 2013. The stock is currently trading at $59 a share, but Jaffe predicts it will hit $64 over the next 12 months.

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A report released Friday on the investigation into the first of back-to-back accidents at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant says a Feb. 5 truck blaze apparently was ignited by a buildup of oil and other combustible materials that should have been regularly cleaned off the vehicle.

The report also identified problems with safety culture at the plant near Carlsbad, and said a series of repeat deficiencies that have been identified by an independent oversight board had gone unresolved.

New Mexico Sens. Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich called the report “deeply concerning.”

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HootSuite is one of OMERS Ventures’ best-known partners (Photo: HootSuite)

If you work for a Canadian startup, you almost certainly know OMERS Ventures. Though relatively new to the scene, OMERS has been making some big bets on Canada’s limping tech sector. While other venture capital companies might commit a few million to a startup, OMERS is handing out tens of millions to Canada’s biggest, most promising young tech companies.

Cities like Toronto and Vancouver have strong startup scenes, but Canada’s growing tech firms have struggled to secure the kind of money thrown around in Silicon Valley. Money that would help these companies scale upward into $1-billion-plus valuation territory. To the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, a $61-billion pension fund, this was untapped opportunity, which was why it launched its venture capital arm, OMERS Ventures, in 2011.

Since then, OMERS Ventures has backed many of Canada’s best-known young tech companies, such as HootSuite, Shopify, Wattpad, BuildDirect, Vision Critical and Desire2Learn.

Last week, OMERS Ventures announced it was hiring a new managing director, Kent Thexton. He comes with an impressive resume, having held leadership roles at various international and Canadian companies, including chief operating officer at Rogers Communications (which owns Canadian Business). I caught up with Thexton recently to ask him about his plans for OMERS Ventures and how Canada can build the next BlackBerry.

CB: What attracted you to OMERS Ventures?

Thexton: An interesting thing happened in Canada in the financial crisis. Canada was already underserved by venture capital, but so many limited partners that invest in the asset class stopped investing in the asset class. So the amount of venture capital available in Canada, the number of venture firms, and the size of the funds all declined. I wanted to see Canada be successful. It’s a critical part of the ecosystem. So OMERS has stepped up in a significant way, building the position it has in Canada, probably as the leading player now. In an ecosystem that needs more venture capital, OMERS is investing significantly. The opportunities from Canadian technology companies are better and brighter than they’ve ever been.

I often hear Canada’s problem is late-stage funding. In other words, turning startups into big companies. Do you find that to be the case?

What we need to build to be successful in Canada are not companies that just serve the Canadian market, but serve the global market. And those are going to need serious ongoing funding to build to scale. Look at some of the investments that OMERS has like HootSuite or Shopify. They’re big global technology companies that are going out there and making an impact on the world scene, and they’ve raised significant capital, which OMERS is proud to be a part of.

There’s an adage in venture capital: you gotta back your winners. You look at all the big funds in the U.S. and their hundreds of millions of dollars. When they have a winner, they’re able to step in and make sure they raise the capital required for them to go out and be a global leader. When you’re playing in the U.S. market, you’re almost de facto positioned to do that. In Canada, it’s a big step from just serving the Canadian market to serving the global market.

You mentioned HootSuite and Shopify, both of which have healthy revenue models. Would you consider funding a company like Snapchat—lots of buzz, but no means to make money?

We would absolutely seriously consider looking at a company that’s fast growing, doesn’t have a good revenue model yet, but is getting a high level of engagement.

I know the VCs behind Twitter and had some really good serious debates back in the early days before it was clear it was going to be a success. And I was saying, yeah, but you guys don’t have a revenue model and the VC said, no, we don’t want to distract ourselves with revenue right now—we just want to get growth and we want to get engagement. He certainly proved to be correct. I might have wanted the company to start a revenue model a bit earlier than they did, but, hey, we’re Canadian and we’re conservative.

What about a company whose endgame is to be acquired?

I won’t speak for OMERS in this regard, but when I was building businesses, the philosophy I’d bring in is you always want to be able to create stand-alone value. Building for someone else to buy you is a real risky thing to do. If they don’t buy you, then you have no value…. I like taking businesses to scale when you can. Sometimes, you end up selling, but I think it’s good to go to scale. We’re patient money at OMERS.

Does Canada need another OMERS Ventures?

I think Canada needs more venture funding. From a selfish perspective right now, it’s good to be in the position OMERS is in because we’re getting to see all the best and brightest. If you’re in Silicon Valley, there are so many VCs.

Nortel and RIM (now BlackBerry), our two biggest success stories, don’t occupy the lofty positions they once did. It’s great to see the new crop of companies that are coming along and doing great things, but they need investment to get there.

Does Canada’s tech scene have a bright future?

Success breeds success. The reason that Waterloo, Ont., is such a hotbed is because RIM was so successful and a lot of people saw that, jumped out and started their own thing.

It takes courage to start a company up. Believe me, I’ve been there. You’re sitting there trying to figure out if you’ll have the funding to make it and the risks you’re taking, the time you’re putting in for, at the time, insignificant rewards. You gotta have a belief system. You gotta be surrounded by success.

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Week of March 17

A10 Networks Inc. – San Jose, Calif., 12.5 million shares, priced $13 to $15, managed by Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch, and J.P. Morgan. Proposed NYSE symbol ATEN. Business: Provides software-based appliances that optimize data centre performance.

Akebia Therapeutics Inc. – Cambridge, Mass., 4.9 million shares, priced $14 to 17, managed by Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and UBS. Proposed Nasdaq symbol AKBA. Business: Biotech developing a breakthrough anemia treatment with a once-daily oral dose.

Amber Road Inc. – East Rutherford, N.J., 6.5 million shares, priced $11 to $13, managed by Stifel. Proposed NYSE symbol AMBR. Business: Provides cloud-based global trade management software.

Borderfree Inc. – New York, 5 million shares, priced $14 to $16, managed by Credit Suisse and RBC Capital Markets. Proposed Nasdaq symbol BRDR. Business: Provides an e-commerce platform for U.S. retailers to market and sell to customers worldwide.

Globoforce Group plc – Dublin, Ireland, 4.4 million ordinary shares, priced $16 to $18, managed by J.P. Morgan, Credit Suisse, and UBS. Proposed Nasdaq symbol THNX. Business: Provides cloud-based, social recognition software solutions to enterprises.

MediWound Ltd. – Yavne, Israel, 5 million ordinary shares, priced $14 to $16, managed by Credit Suisse, Jefferies, and BMO Capital Markets. Proposed Nasdaq symbol MDWD. Business: Biotech developing treatments for severe burns and other hard-to-heal wounds.

Paylocity Holding Corp. – Arlington Heights, Ill., 6.7 million shares, priced $14 to $16, managed by Deutsche Bank, BofA Merrill Lynch, and William Blair. Proposed Nasdaq symbol PCTY. Business: Provides cloud-based payroll and human capital management software.

Q2 Holdings Inc. – Austin, Texas, 7.8 million shares, priced $11 to $13, managed by J.P. Morgan, and Stifel. Proposed NYSE symbol QTWO. Business: Provides an online banking SaaS platform to community banks.

TPG Specialty Lending Inc. – Fort Worth, Texas, 7 million shares, priced $16 to $17, managed by multiple firms. Proposed NYSE symbol TSLX. Business: Specialty finance company focused on lending to middle-market companies.

Versartis Inc. – Redwood City, Calif., 4.6 million shares, priced $16 to $19, managed by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. Proposed Nasdaq symbol VSAR. Business: Biotech developing long-acting treatments for growth hormone deficiency.

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The coalition — made up mostly of environmental groups from both inside and outside Alberta — made its plea in an open letter to the Alberta Energy Regulator.

“The AER must reject CNRL’s application for resteaming to ensure that no more damage is done to this area,” the groups wrote.

“No new steaming activity should occur on CNRL’s Primrose property, including Primrose East and South, until the AER has completed its investigation into these blowouts. The AER must determine the root cause of these blowouts and must identify solutions to ensure events of a similar nature do not reoccur.”

The groups note some of the locations where CNRL wants to steam are less than 500 metres away from active spill sites.

“The AER needs to send a strong message to CNRL that protecting the environment and preventing future disasters comes before increasing one company’s profit margin,” said Jesse Cardinal, with Keepers of the Athabasca.

“People throughout Alberta and around the world are watching this decision. It’s time the AER does the right thing and turns it down.”

Last Friday, the AER told CNRL it would deny its application to steam at a different location in a “restricted zone” — imposed by the AER last spring when an emulsion of bitumen and water was found to be oozing to the surface.

As of Friday, more than 1,800 people have signed a petition demanding the AER deny CNRL’s requests and investigate the safety of the extraction technique the company uses at Primrose.

AER spokesman Bob Curran said the regulator does not track petitions as part of its formal process, but does receive them on occasion.

“As part of our formal process, any party is free to submit a statement of concern to us regarding an application,” he said.

Calgary-based CNRL said last week it had finished cleaning up three of four spill sites, with the last set to be completed before the ground thaws.

It said it would aim to resume steaming at Primrose this month or next. Company president Steve Laut said the steam would be pumped at pressures so low that it would be “impossible” for there to be problems.

He reiterated CNRL’s view that the Primrose issues are “solvable” and that faulty wellbores are to blame. So far, the regulator has not come to the same conclusion. Following a similar event in 2009, it flagged geologic weaknesses as a potential cause.

At Primrose, Canadian Natural pumps steam underground and allows it to soak into the reservoir before drawing the crude to the surface, a process known as high-pressure cyclic steam stimulation, or HPCSS.

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The company in question, Hybrid Turkeys, said it had suspended four employees and called the abuse depicted in the video an isolated incident.

The video was shot at a Hybrid plant in Bright, Ont., by a member of the animal rights group, Mercy for Animals Canada.

Footage also shows workers apparently crushing the spines of birds while others are left to die from festering and bloody wounds.

“This investigation graphically illustrates that the hidden price of Canadian turkey meat is horrific animal abuse,” said Twyla Francois, a spokeswoman for Mercy For Animals.

“This is blatant animal cruelty that shouldn’t be supported in a civilized society.”

In anticipation of the video’s release, Hybrid said last week that it had taken immediate steps to ensure the ethical treatment of its turkeys.

“Hybrid has zero tolerance for animal abuse,” managing director David Libertini said in a statement.

Hybrid, of Kitchener, Ont., said it would co-operate with any investigations into the abuse and had already initiated a third-party review of company policies and procedures.

Helen Wojcinski, the company’s science and sustainability manager, said in an interview Friday she was concerned by what she had seen on the video.

“Employees are not using the method of euthanasia that we want them to use,” Wojcinski said, noting blunt-force trauma is an approved killing method.

While the employees remain suspended, the company is still waiting to talk to them as part of its investigation because it didn’t have the full, unedited video.

“It’s trying to get the whole context or perspective,” Wojcinski said.

The company also said it would become the first turkey producer in North America to employ mandatory video monitoring and veterinary review of all turkey euthanasia.

Mercy for Animals said national standards across the county need to be tightened to include immediate veterinary care for sick or injured birds.

All facilities that handle farmed animals should install video monitoring and livestream the footage on the Internet, the group said.

The activists also called on the industry to forego some profits by stopping the breeding of turkeys for rapid growth that can leave them crippled under their own weight.

Some of the birds suffer from bone defects, hip-joint lesions, foot and leg deformities, and heart attacks as a result of the unnaturally fast growth, the group said.

However, Wojcinski said the company selected only the “healthiest” birds to ensure a “consistent and secure food supply to people who need to feed their families.”

More than 21 million turkeys are raised and killed for food every year in Canada — of which about 60 per cent come from Hybrid. Hendrix Genetics, the parent company of Hybrid Turkeys, is the second largest producer in the world.

Dr. Mike Petrik, a poultry vet based in Guelph, Ont., said the video had been cut to show the situation in the worst possible light and was not representative of the care turkeys receive in Ontario.

“You have to realize the logistics of euthanizing a turkey: they’re very big, they’re very strong, and it’s physically difficult to do, so blunt trauma to the head to render them immediately unconscious is a humane method of euthanasia,” said Petrik, who works closely with the industry.

“Having said that, there are things on the video that are abnormal and unacceptable.”

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The acknowledgement comes after a media report said Thursday that Target’s security team in Bangalore received security alerts on Nov. 30 that indicated malicious software had appeared in its network. It then flagged the security team at its home office in Minneapolis.

Target says the security team determined that it “did not warrant immediate follow-up” based on their “interpretation and evaluation of that activity.”

The development comes nearly three months after Target revealed that hackers stole credit card numbers and personal data of millions of its customers. Target’s sales, profit and stock prices have dropped in the wake of the massive breach.

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Boston Beer Co.’s decision came a day after a bar in Boston’s South End said it would no longer serve Sam Adams beer because of the brewer’s affiliation with the parade, which is scheduled for Sunday.

Mayor Martin Walsh and U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch have been trying to broker a deal that would have allowed a gay group to march, but those negotiations broke down.

“We were hopeful that both sides of this issue would be able to come to an agreement that would allow everyone, regardless of orientation, to participate in the parade. But given the current status of the negotiations, we realize this may not be possible,” Boston Beer Co. said in its statement. “We share these sentiments with Mayor Walsh, Congressman Lynch and others and therefore we will not participate in this year’s parade.”

The brewer said it would continue to sponsor the annual St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast, which is regularly attended by most of the state’s major politicians. That is also on Sunday.

A Boston Beer Co. spokeswoman did not immediately return a call.

The parade organizers’ phone went unanswered Friday.

The Irish-American mayor said he would not march in the parade unless gay groups were allowed to march.

He tried to broker a deal between the gay rights advocacy group MassEquality and the organizers, the South Boston Allied War Veterans Council. A 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruled that the council could include or exclude whichever groups it wanted.

A sticking point was MassEquality’s request that its members be allowed to carry banners or signs identifying themselves as gay, which organizers did not want.

Organizers said they had been “misled,” because LGBT Veterans for Equality, an affiliate of MassEquality, was not a recognized veterans’ organization.

The parade, one of the largest St. Patrick’s Day parades in the nation, draws as many as 1 million spectators to South Boston

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Verizon replaces former title sponsor Izod. Its sponsorship of what will now be known as the Verizon IndyCar Series launches with the March 30 season opening race.

The partnership announced Friday includes network coverage upgrades to Indianapolis Motor Speedway, as well as enhancements to IndyCar’s race control and new pit lane monitors. New York-based Verizon, the largest U.S. cellphone carrier, also plans to enhance connectivity for spectators at domestic races.

“Verizon is delighted to become the title sponsor of the IndyCar series and to bring even more of our innovative technology to the fans, to the teams and to the entire motorsports community,” said Dan Mead, president and CEO of Verizon Wireless.

“The intersection of racing and technology has never been more relevant, and our expanded partnership with INDYCAR provides a unique opportunity to demonstrate that synergy, integrate new services like LTE Multicast and help propel the sport forward.”

Verizon has been an “official partner” of IndyCar for the past four years, and is the primary sponsor of Will Power’s car with Team Penske. Verizon will also sponsor Juan Pablo Montoya in at least eight races this year, and sponsor all three of Team Penske’s cars at the inaugural road course race at Indianapolis.

As part of the deal with IndyCar, Verizon will use its LTE Multicast solution at race tracks in the future. It will also complement the Verizon IndyCar ’14 app and indycar.com, the series’ website.

“Verizon is the perfect partner for us to showcase the high level of innovation and technology that is inherent in our sport,” said Mark Miles, CEO, Hulman & Co., the parent of IndyCar and IMS. “IndyCar will provide a large audience of tech-savvy consumers who are eager for the latest technology to further enhance their experience.”

Verizon joins rival Sprint as sponsor of a major auto racing series. Sprint is the title sponsor for NASCAR’s top Sprint Cup Series.

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This story originally appeared on ProfitGuide.com

The next season of CBC’s wildly popular Dragons’ Den will not feature the founder of Lavalife or the self-proclaimed “Mr. Wonderful.” Instead, it will boast a Bay Street bad boy and an acclaimed Vancouver restauranteur.

On March 14, CBC announced that both Kevin O’Leary and Bruce Croxon would not return as on-screen financiers for the ninth season of the show. Replacing them will be Michael Wekerle, the controversial merchant banker and Vikram Vij, the proprietor and chef behind several extremely popular west coast restaurants.

Wekerle started trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange at the age of 18, and his many early successes include early investment in Research in Motion (now BlackBerry). Described on CBC’s website as “Mick Jagger meets Warren Buffet,” he’s garnered headlines as much for his allegedly outlandish behaviour and lavish lifestyle as his investing acumen. He is currently the CEO of merchant banking firm Difference Capital (whose investments include Virgin Gaming, BuildDirect and 2013 PROFIT 500 winners Vision Critical and GuestLogix)

Vij emigrated to Canada in 1989, and five years later opened Vij’s, which has become a favourite restaurant of such influential  connoisseurs as Martha Stewart and Mark Bittman. He has since published cookbooks, released a line of prepackaged curries sold in grocery stores across the country, and appeared as a celebrity chef on several Food Network and CBC programs—enough to earn him the 2011 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award.

O’Leary, who built his fortune in educational software, had been on Dragons’ Den since the show’s debut in Canada. The bestselling author, (whose attitude towards entrepreneurship is that “business is war“), will continue to makes regular TV appearances on CBC’s Lang & O’Leary Exchange and ABC’s Shark Tank.

Croxon (who recently told PROFIT “you see these very successful entrepreneurs, and they’re crazy“) founded online dating giant Lavalife before starting venture-capital firm Round 13. He joined the cast of Dragons’ Den in 2011.

This is not the first time the titular Dragons on the show have changed. Of the five investors who cast at the show’s debut, only Jim Treliving remains. Over the years, Dragons Jennifer Wood, W. Brett Wilson and Robert Herjavec have left the show. One original Dragon, La Senza founder Lawrence Lewin, passed away after season two.

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Hoeness, one of the most prominent figures in German football, was convicted on Thursday of evading millions of euros (dollars) in tax through an undeclared Swiss bank account and sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. The verdict drew a largely positive response in a country where tax evasion is deeply and increasingly frowned upon.

Hoeness’ lawyer initially said he would file an appeal. However, Hoeness said in a brief statement on Bayern’s website that he decided after talking with his family to accept the verdict.

“This corresponds with my personal understanding of decency, attitude and personal responsibility,” he wrote. “Tax evasion was the mistake of my life. I am facing up to the consequences of this mistake.”

Hoeness said he was stepping down immediately as club president and as the chairman of Bayern’s supervisory board. He said he wanted “to prevent damage to my club.”

“Bayern Munich is my life’s work and it will always remain so,” he said. “I will remain linked with this great club and its people in other ways as long as I live.”

Hoeness thanked Bayern supporters and his friends for their support. The club stood by him through the investigation.

Last year’s revelations that Hoeness was the target of a tax evasion investigation prompted Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman to say the German leader was disappointed in the Bayern president, who also was well-known for his generosity and charity work. Hoeness supported an effort to improve the integration of immigrants that Merkel also backed.

“I don’t comment on court decisions, of course, but I can say that the fact Uli Hoeness has now accepted this verdict commands my highest respect,” Merkel said after a meeting with business leaders in Munich.

Hoeness’ lawyers argued for probation in the tax case, based on the fact that he turned himself in to authorities last year. Prosecutors sought a 5 1/2-year sentence; the legal maximum for tax evasion is 10 years.

Prosecutors also are entitled to appeal, but made no immediate decision on whether they will.

Bayern said Herbert Hainer, the chief executive of sportswear maker Adidas, will serve as supervisory board chairman until further notice. He was previously deputy chairman.

There was no immediate word on who will succeed Hoeness as Bayern president.

Coach Pep Guardiola said he had seen in his nine months at Bayern “how important Uli Hoeness is for this club.”

“He is my friend and he will remain my friend,” Guardiola said at a news conference ahead of Saturday’s home match against third-place Bayer Leverkusen. “We have to carry on with what we have learned from Uli.”

Bayern won the Bundesliga, Champions League and German Cup last season and could repeat that treble this season.

As a player, Hoeness was a Bayern star who won the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup with West Germany and three straight European Cups — the predecessor of the Champions League — before retiring in 1979 with chronic knee problems.

Under his guidance as general manager, Bayern built financial reserves rarely seen in debt-ridden European football.

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The increase came in “other compensation,” which includes company-paid costs for Buffett’s personal and home security. As usual, Buffett reimbursed Berkshire $50,000 for personal costs such as postage and phone calls.

Buffett, 83, is the Omaha, Neb., company’s chairman and chief executive.

Most of Buffett’s wealth comes from his Berkshire stock. The share price rose 32 per cent in 2013.

The salaries of Buffett and Vice Chairman Charles Munger have been set at $100,000 for more than 25 years, and Buffett doesn’t want or expect a raise, the conglomerate said in a regulatory filing Friday. Unlike many other companies, Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t grant stock options to executives.

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The online health care software company raised $177.6 million in an initial public offering priced at $16 per share.

Its shares jumped $23.80 to close at $39.80 Friday. They rose as high as $41.95 earlier in the day.

The San Francisco-based company sells cloud-based software to large companies that provide the service to their workers. Employees use Castlight to search and compare doctors, hospitals and procedures based on cost and the quality of care. It’s a way for companies and employees to lower their health care costs.

“We’re really focusing on building an iconic company that changes health care,” said CEO and co-founder Giovanni Colella.

Castlight sold 11.1 million share of its Class B common stock in the IPO. The $16-per-share price was above its previously announced range of $13 per share and $15 per share.

The stock is trading under the ticker symbol “CSLT.”

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The country’s ambassador to Kabul signalled this week that the moribund Afghan economy will be a principal focus for Canada, which has formally ended its military mission.

The hope is to turn the page on a decade of military involvement and aid handouts in the desperately poor, war-torn nation.

Standards which Canada has long promoted, education, good governance and women’s rights, will still be there, with an additional emphasis on business.

“Our diplomatic focus will also be on economic development,” said Deborah Lyons, who took over as Canada’s first woman ambassador to Afghanistan six months ago.

The approach has the enthusiastic endorsement of Shamial Bantija, Afghanistan’s ambassador-designate to Canada and an economic adviser to President Hamid Karzai.

“We see Canada as our closest partner, not in terms of assistance, but the capacities you have that we want to take advantage of,” said Bantija. “I should like to see now Canada and Afghanistan get into more economic connections.”

The Canadian business community has expertise Afghanistan can use, particularly in mining, he said.

It may seem like a tall order in a country that’s in a perpetual state of security lockdown, where roadside bombs and shootings disrupt daily life, civilians die by the thousands each year and foreigners cower in heavily guarded compounds.

Nevertheless, the government is embracing one of the main pillars of long-term, counter-insurgency strategy which says the best way to disarm a guerilla is to give him a job.

And, all of this supposed to take place in country that Prime Minister Stephen Harper once said didn’t deserve a “dime” of direct foreign aid money until it cleaned up its official corruption.

Lyons said it’s getting there.

“We’ve got to work with the Afghan government to get the necessary legislation in place, whether it’s mining legislation or anti-money laundering laws, to get an environment in place for business to do business,” she said in a recent interview with The Canadian Press.

Reports by the Pentagon and U.S. geological experts suggest Afghanistan could hold up to $1 trillion in mineral reserves, a jaw-dropping estimate that’s been lost amid the violence and bloodshed.

While the Canadian military has showcased its training and mentoring of Afghan soldiers and police, Canadian companies have quietly played key roles in advising the Afghan ministry of mines.

Canaccord Financial Inc., of Vancouver, has provided guidance on financing and another B.C. company, SRK Consulting, gets tapped for expertise in geology.

The Afghans have even adopted Canadian mineral reserve reporting standards.

“Afghanistan has got to look at developing its sources of revenues,” Lyons said. “That has to happen in the same way Afghanistan is taking responsibility for its security, they too have to be developing forms of business and enterprise that will bring revenue into the government.”

The argument sounds good and makes sense, but Afghans have long complained that international development assistance has been calibrated in favour of big, multinational corporations. They swoop into the country to carry out a project, bring their own staff, provide few local jobs beyond the purchase of basic services and funnel the profits back home.

The frustration was on full display at the 2008 donors conference in Paris where Karzai’s government demanded more say over how development dollars were spent and was largely ignored.

Bantija said there’s a real concern of an economic downturn as international forces withdraw.

Last month, Washington unveiled $300 million in aid initiatives to help cushion the blow from the troop departure, but there are still concerns the country’s war economy could slide backwards into greater poverty.

Local businesses in Kabul say they’re already feeling the uncertainty.

Merchants in the city’s bustling Afghana market say there has been a noticeable decrease in spending by city residents.

Shah Mohammed, vice-president of Ziarmal Maiwand Construction and Engineering Services Co., said his business has dropped by about a third in the last 18 months.

His company builds retaining and security walls and despite the continued need, local companies are holding off spending until the fiscal climate becomes clear.

“People are very concerned,” said Mohammed, who lives in a working-class neighbourhood of Kabul, where children play in fields of garbage and merchants scrape by hawking fruit and goods from mobile carts.

The post Digging trenches to digging mines; the new face of Canada’s Afghan experience appeared first on Canadian Business.

(Sobeys; iStock)

An audacious idea had been stewing in Paul Sobey’s head for more than a decade. The fourth-generation keeper of the Sobeys grocery legacy wanted to buy Safeway, a rival chain, and add its 213 stores to his empire. A successful takeover would thrust his company ahead of most of the competition while solidifying its standing in Western Canada, an area of relative weakness for the company. But how could he pull off the acquisition without drawing the attention of the competition?

He’d had problems with previous deals. Word of Sobeys’ previous mega-merger—the 1998 purchase of the Oshawa Group for $1.5 billion—was leaked before it was announced. In 2005, he lost out to Quebec’s Metro Inc. in a bidding war for A&P’s Canadian supermarkets. If he was going to claim Canada Safeway, Sobey believed secrecy would be key.

Negotiations between executives at Sobeys and Safeway were to remain entirely confidential. Discussion sessions were often held in hotels in neutral locations, to shield the $5.8-billion deal from competitors. The negotiation effort was even given a code name—“London”—further adding to the secrecy.

And this time around, there was complete silence. Thus, no bidding war. Michael Van Aelst, an analyst at TD Securities, called it the “strategic coup of the year.”

“Nobody knew about this,” says a grinning Paul Sobey, longtime CEO of Empire Co. Ltd., the parent company of Sobeys. “All the articles always talked about other players doing this. They never talked about us doing this,” he adds in a mocking tone, obviously delighted at surprising his rivals. “Everybody was shocked.”

His pride is justified. A Toronto Star article from October 2012 reported that Safeway’s western Canadian stores were “a prime target for retailing behemoths like Loblaws and Metro.” There was no mention of Sobeys.

The takeover, completed in November, dramatically boosts Sobeys’ national market share from 13% to 18%, catapulting it well ahead of a pack that includes Walmart Canada (12%), Montreal’s Metro (11%) and Costco (10%). Sobeys remains in second place to Loblaw, which boasts control of 27% of the Canadian grocery market, but the Safeway purchase turns Sobeys into the market leader in Western Canada, including in the high-growth Alberta market. That’s a significant milestone for a company that had trailed its biggest competitor in every region of the country, even on its home turf in Atlantic Canada. The merger is also expected to save Sobeys $200 million annually, and boosts its buying volume by nearly 40%—granting purchasing power to a company keen to keep its prices low in an ever-more-competitive environment.

“You can’t sit on your haunches and milk a business,” Sobey says. “Otherwise, you might as well get rid of it.”

Significant challenges remain for the 106-year-old grocery giant, which remains headquartered in Stellarton, a town of 4,500 in the heart of Nova Scotia’s former coal country. Sobeys must now integrate Safeway’s web of stores into its own network, while avoiding the costly setbacks that marred the company’s earlier purchase of the Oshawa Group, which ran IGA stores across the country. In that case, IT integration issues cost the company millions of dollars—and caused a five-day system crash. Low inflation, sluggish sales and “cautious, cherry-picking” Canadian shoppers pose their own challenges, forcing the country’s grocers to pressure suppliers, drop prices and employ myriad sales. In the Canadian grocery business, said Perry Caicco, the managing director of equity research at CIBC World Markets, “your weekly business depends entirely on the strength of your latest flyer.”

At the same time, Empire has undergone a significant management change. Paul Sobey retired on Dec. 11, after 15 years as both Empire’s chief executive and the face of the current Sobey generation. The 56-year-old was replaced by Marc Poulin, who has been the president and CEO of Sobeys since June 2012. Poulin now holds the president and chief executive titles at both Sobeys and Empire, the parent company. A tricky merger can trigger a company’s decline on its own, as can a leadership change. Yet Sobey bet his family’s legacy on doing both at once.

Sobey’s new CEO, Marc Poulin (Sobeys)

Paul Sobey was born into one of Canada’s most successful business families; his last name is lit in large green letters above grocery store entrances across Canada. As a teenager in the 1970s, however, he didn’t want to work in the family business at all.

“I said, ‘I’m going to get my own summer job.’ So I ended up working with Atlantic Wholesalers, which was owned by Loblaws,” he says, laughing heartily.

Sobey rode alongside that company’s truck drivers, helping to unload cargo at stores in and around his hometown of Stellarton. “That lasted about three weeks. They must have found out who I was from the head office. They suggested they didn’t need me anymore,” he recalls. He later worked as a “mule” for the provincial highways department, hauling logs from the woods to make room for a new stretch of Pictou County road. Joining the family business, young Paul soon realized, might not be so bad after all.

The Sobeys grocery empire began modestly in 1907 when J. W. Sobey started delivering meat with a horse-drawn cart. J.W.’s son, Frank, was the true empire builder. An ambitious entrepreneur, Frank Sobey transformed the company into a Nova Scotia powerhouse, a blend of grocery stores, movie theatres and real estate holdings.

Frank, who died in 1985, was Paul Sobey’s grandfather. On this day, Sobey is sitting in his grandfather’s former home, a 1960s-era building that overlooks Pictou Harbour. The former residence, known as Crombie House (named for its location in Abercrombie, just outside Stellarton), is now used for functions and family gatherings. (Eighty members of the Sobey clan convened there for a party over the holidays.)

The building is also home to the family’s art collection, which includes works by Tom Thomson, the Group of Seven, Emily Carr and Alex Colville. (Free tours are offered to the public each Wednesday during the summer.) A wall of paintings by Cornelius Krieghoff hangs behind Sobey as he sits at a large dining room table, recalling a visit to Crombie House after his graduation from university. He sat with his grandfather and father, David, and mentioned that he’d like to get into the food business. “I remember Frank turned around and said, ‘What do you want to get in the food business for?’” Sobey says, using a grumpy-old-man voice to impersonate his late grandfather. “We’ve got a lot of people in the food business. Why don’t you go out and learn something new. Why don’t you take finance or do something else so you can add something to the business.”

Sobey took his grandfather’s advice and became a chartered accountant. He worked in Toronto for a spell before joining Empire full-time in 1982. In 1998 he was named president and CEO. That same year, Sobeys gobbled up the Toronto-based Oshawa Group for $1.5 billion. The acquisition tripled Sobeys’ size and made it a truly national player—taking the company further into Central and Western Canada. Today it’s a $17.6-billion company with more than 1,500 stores in all 10 provinces, under banners such as IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods and Lawton’s Drug Stores.

Yet the Oshawa merger also saw Sobeys flounder through an IT debacle as it tried to bridge the two grocery entities with one enterprise software platform. The Oshawa side included 25 different checkout systems (the result of its own acquisitions), and Sobeys struggled to integrate the tangled mess. “I think we were trying to do too much, too fast,” Sobey admits.

The two-year struggle peaked in December 2000 when Sobeys’ SAP software system crashed and stayed down for five days during the busy holiday rush. The company took a month to recover from the disruption, and was forced to scrap the new system—a move that resulted in an after-tax charge of $49.9 million, or 82¢ a share.

“We made some mistakes, obviously,” Sobey says. He doesn’t expect a repeat of that situation as Sobeys works to integrate the Canada Safeway stores.

His family’s company, he insists, is now much better at change management. “The Oshawa deal was a complete learning experience. It was new,” he says. Plus, the Safeway pieces should “plug and play,” meaning they’ll integrate easily into the Sobeys network, though he admits that it will require “a pretty long extension cord.”

Integration errors aside, the Oshawa acquisition was a clear win for Sobeys. “Its Oshawa purchase in 1998 has been nothing short of a home run, delivering scale, growth, and talent,” notes Scotia Capital analyst Patricia Baker in a recent report. Empire’s shares have advanced 428% in the years since, and the deal has provided Sobeys with a “big win” in Quebec. Baker notes that Sobeys has fared far better with the Oshawa Group than Loblaw did with its purchase of Provigo, which was made around the same time. Empire has delivered annual returns of 13.5% since the Oshawa merger (up to the 2013 fiscal year); Loblaw, meanwhile, has delivered annual returns of 3.2%.

Kathleen Wong, an analyst at Veritas Investment Research, links Sobeys’ recent performance in part to the company’s “significant investment” in logistics and distribution. She notes the company rationalized distribution facilities in Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, while opening automated distribution centres in Vaughan, Ont., in 2009, and in Terrebonne, Que., in 2012. “Those two facilities helped Sobeys to increase its warehouse and distribution capacity significantly and reduce distribution costs,” she says.

The Oshawa acquisition also brought Marc Poulin over to the Sobeys side. At the Oshawa Group, Poulin was the vice-president of grocery merchandising, and he became president of Sobeys’ Quebec division for 11 years before his appointment as Sobeys’ president and CEO in June 2012. In December he replaced Paul Sobey as president and CEO of Empire, meaning Poulin now helms the parent company and its primary subsidiary. He’s now responsible for overseeing the Safeway integration, a process he says will require three years—and plenty of trips to Western Canada. “There’s been lots of flights to Calgary lately,” he says by phone from Sobeys’ Mississauga office, “including one tonight.”

Poulin, 52, calls the Safeway acquisition “truly transformation,” noting it will make Sobeys a dominant player in Western Canada, an area where until recentlythe company had a relatively weak presence—even with its 2007 purchase of Thrifty Foods in British Columbia. Sobeys now boasts market share of 23.4% in Western Canada, giving it a slight edge over Loblaw. “It changes significantly the dynamic of the company and its ability to compete in the Canadian marketplace,” Poulin says of the merger.

The first Sobeys “groceteria” in New Glasgow (Sobeys Archive)

If anyone else was taking over Sobeys, analysts might be worried. But Poulin’s long history with the company—he was there during the Oshawa merger—makes it far less risky to change leaders while integrating a competitor, says Wong. “Marc has already witnessed the integration of two grocers.”

Paul Sobey agrees, calling Poulin an “excellent choice” for Empire’s chief executive post. “Here’s an individual that came up through the organization and understands our culture,” he says, adding that Sobeys’ offering in Quebec, under Poulin, is “one of the best in North America.”

As for his new position at the top of the Empire pyramid, Poulin doesn’t think it’s such a big change. After all, he was already helming Sobeys, which accounts for more than 98% of Empire’s consolidated sales, and 94% of its adjusted net earnings.

Up until 2000, Empire was—as Patricia Baker puts it—a “true conglomerate,” a holding company with a wide variety of assets and investments. During Paul Sobey’s tenure as CEO, however, the company shed peripheral assets, including a stake in Wajax, a distributor of construction and manufacturing equipment, and a 25% stake in Hannaford Bros., a New England–based grocer. “During my term, my focus has been trying to simplify the organization, trying to simplify the management structure within the organization, and trying to focus on our areas where we truly wanted to grow and develop—that’s the food and related real estate business,” Sobey says. “I knew where our focus should be.”

In 2007 Empire took Sobeys private, thus streamlining the organization. Up to that point both Sobeys and Empire were publicly traded companies.

More recently, in November, Empire Theatres sold 46 theatres to Cineplex Inc. and Landmark Cinemas. The two deals brought in $248 million. (Sobey says his hard-driving grandfather would often go to movies at the local Jubilee theatre “just to chill out.”)

Thus the Safeway acquisition can be seen as the culmination of a 15-year effort to hone Empire’s focus even more tightly on the grocery business and its related real estate. “This movement toward a food-focused strategy at Empire is not something new,” Poulin says. “You could argue we are—to take a food expression—putting all of our eggs in one basket.”

It’s possible, though, that Empire’s narrowing focus could hurt it. Increased pressures—like low inflation and a strong U.S. dollar that increases buying costs—have created a “tough hill to climb” for Canadian grocers, according to a recent note from BMO analyst Peter Sklar. Empire faced the “most potential downside,” because it lacks substantial non-grocery holdings to insulate it from the chilly competitive climate—unlike Loblaw with Shoppers Drug Mart, or Metro with its interest in Alimentation Couche-Tard, the Quebec-based convenience store operator.

Sobeys is attempting to compete, in part, by upping pressure on its suppliers. The company recently told suppliers to reduce their prices by 1%, retroactive to Nov. 3, as well as scrap any planned price increases for 2014.

The Safeway deal is also expected to deliver $200 million in annual savings. Wong predicts Sobeys’ savings will come from integrating the two companies’ distribution networks in Western Canada, and by merging administrative and marketing efforts. She also notes the Safeway acquisition will increase Sobeys’ buying volume by almost 40%, further boosting its purchasing power.

Yet Sobeys is looking to differentiate itself on more than just the price of milk and bread. Poulin says the company must also be a champion of the “better food movement,” pointing to two announcements from November. The first involved a new line of 14 products developed in partnership with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, including Herby Lemon Flattened Chicken (made with Certified Humane chicken) and Scrumptious Seafood Pie. The second announcement was the unveiling in Burlington, Ont., of the first Sobeys “extra” location. The upgraded 58,000-square-foot store boasts an in-store chef, a Wellbeing Counsellor, a Cheese Ambassador, as well as expanded bakery and produce sections. “It’s a new prototype for us,” Poulin says. The goal, he adds, is to “help Canadians eat better, feel better and do better.”

Analysts seem to think that Sobeys’ big gambles will pay off. Scotia Capital’s Patricia Baker says Empire is “positioned to embark on a new era in its storied history.” Perry Caicco, at CIBC World Markets, describes the Empire-Safeway integration “as a long journey with a powerful ending.”

Sobey says both his grandfather and father marvelled at the company’s size and progress at the end of their respective management tenures. And he feels similarly. “I think we’re in an outstanding position,” he says. Sobey still has an office at Empire’s headquarters in Stellarton. He’ll remain on the company’s board and says he’ll act as a “custodian of the future success and wealth of the organization.” After 15 years as CEO, it was the proper time to depart Empire, he insists. “You always need fresh ideas and new thinking. If you stay in a position too long, you run the risk of …” He doesn’t finish the sentence. “It’s a good time.”

Sobey excuses himself from the table, where we’ve just concluded a lunch of French onion soup and salad, to take a call from his wife, Marsha. “I’m going to have to eat and run,” he says after returning to the table. A few minutes later, after entering the Crombie House kitchen to say goodbye to the staff, he’s in a black Mercedes, whisking down a Pictou County road that his great-grandfather may have navigated with a horse-drawn cart.

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As speculation intensified Friday that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane might have been commandeered by someone with aviation skills, a picture began to emerge of the two pilots.

Police have said they are looking at their psychological background, their family life and connections as a line of inquiry into what happened to Flight MH370, which vanished early March 8 while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. There is no evidence linking them to any wrongdoing.

Pilots Zaharie Ahmad Shah, 53, and Fariq Abdul Hamid were described as respectable, community-minded men.

Fariq has drawn the greatest scrutiny after the revelation that in 2011, he and another pilot invited two women boarding their aircraft to sit in the cockpit for a flight from Phuket, Thailand, to Kuala Lumpur.

During the flight, the pilots smoked and flirted, one of the women, South African Jonti Roos, said in an interview broadcast by Australia’s Nine Network. The claims were backed up with numerous photos showing Roos and her friend posing in the cockpit.

Although initially thrilled by the experience, Roos also described it as “possibly a little bit sleazy.”

Malaysia Airlines said it was shocked by the report and was investigating.

Fariq was a “good boy, a good Muslim, humble and quiet,” said Ahmad Sarafi Ali Asrah, the head of a mosque near Fariq’s two-story home in a middle-class neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.

“I don’t think he is a playboy. But I don’t know about his personal life.” the imam added,

He described Fariq’s parents as distraught over the missing plane and said the community was solidly supporting the family with prayers.

Fariq, the son of a high-ranking civil servant in Selangor state, joined Malaysia Airlines in 2007. With 2,763 hours of flight experience, he had only recently started co-piloting the sophisticated Boeing 777.

“His father still cries when he talks about Fariq. His mother too,” Ahmad Sarafi saod.

Fariq had a brush with fame when he was filmed recently by a crew from “CNN Business Traveler,” and reporter Richard Quest described it as a perfect landing of a Boeing 777-200, the same model as the plane that vanished. An online tribute page to the pilots shows a photo of Fariq in the cockpit with Quest, both smiling.

Neighbour Ayop Jantan said he had heard that Fariq was engaged and planning his wedding. The eldest of five, Fariq’s professional achievements were a source of pride for his father, Ayop said.

Zaharie, the pilot of MH370, joined Malaysia Airlines in 1981 and had more than 18,000 hours of experience.

His Facebook page showed an aviation enthusiast who flew remote-controlled aircraft, posting pictures of his collection, which included a lightweight twin-engine helicopter and an amphibious aircraft.

Born in northern Penang state, the captain and grandfather was an enthusiastic handyman and proud home cook. As part of what he called “community service,” he had posted several YouTube videos including how to make air conditioners more efficient to cut electricity bills, how to waterproof window panes, and how to repair a refrigerator icemaker.

Neighbours praised their commitment to the community. Fariq played futsal, a modified form of soccer popular in Southeast Asia, with neighbourhood youngsters, and he paid for their sports shirts.

Zaharie was known for cooking food for community events or making sure his wife and children did when he couldn’t attend. A supporter of Malaysia’s main opposition parties, he had volunteered to be a poll monitor in recent elections.

Zaharie posted photos online of the flight simulator he built for his home using three large computer monitors and other accessories.

Asked at a news conference whether it was unusual for pilots to have such equipment at home, Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said “everyone is free to do his own hobby.”

Zaharie was certified by Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation as a flight simulator examiner, according to Malaysia Airlines.

___

Associated Press writer Ian Mader contributed to this report.

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