Drinking to get ahead in China

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 1 Comment

Conventional wisdom tells us binge drinking is an indulgence typically reserved for the young and irresponsible. In Canada, that seems to be the case. Most binge drinkers are between 15 and 24 years old, according to the Canadian Medical Association Journal. But not in China, where those most likely to binge are men between the ages of 35 and 44, according to a recent study that surveyed nearly 50,000 people. On top of that, the study found that both drinking frequency and quantity increase with age. On average, Chinese men who drink consume 47.8 grams of pure alcohol every day, just shy of the 50-gram cut-off for the study’s definition of binge drinking. Such drinking in China, the study concludes, has reached “epidemic proportions.”

Yichong Li, the study’s lead author, speculates that Chinese business culture is largely to blame. Peter Chi, a school principal in northeastern China, feels similarly. “If I drink, it doesn’t necessarily help me get promoted. But if I don’t, it’s less likely that I will be. So I must drink, even if it’s not pleasant at all,” he told Britain’s Guardian. Job advertisements are even known to list “good drinking capacity” as a required credential. It seems binge drinking in China is largely a white-collar affair.

In conversation: David Chilton

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Andrew Tolson/Maclean's

In 1989, David Chilton published The Wealthy Barber, a seminal book on money, focusing on three people in their 20s who visit Roy, a barber, for lessons on financial planning. It went on to sell more than two million copies, making it one of the bestselling Canadian books of all time. Now, more than 20 years later, and in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the 49-year-old has released the long-awaited follow-up: The Wealthy Barber Returns, which hits bookshelves this week.

Q: How old were you when you first published The Wealthy Barber?

A: I was 25 when I started writing it and 27 when it came out. I was very lucky. I really was. Interest rates had just started heading on a steady path downward and that was really important because it made people realize they couldn’t just rely on GICs [guaranteed investment certificates], they had to start looking for other investments. And that meant they needed some knowledge. Also, there was almost no competition. When The Wealthy Barber came out, there were only two other Canadian personal finance books in the marketplace. Now there are hundreds.

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Is Under Armour ready for the big leagues?

By Chris Sorensen - Wednesday, September 7, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

The Washington Post/Getty Images

Kevin Plank, the founder and CEO of sportswear apparel company Under Armour, has been a long-time supporter of the University of Maryland’s football team, the Terrapins, where he was once a special teams captain. But the relationship entered a new phase last week when the Terps’ new, Under Armour-made uniforms were unveiled for the upcoming season—all 32 variations of them.

The over-the-top, mix-and-match approach—there are four different colours of Terps jerseys, four different colours of pants, and two different colours of helmets—is all about marketing buzz and drew immediate comparisons to Nike’s efforts to use football players at the University of Oregon (Nike founder and chair Phil Knight is an alumni) as human billboards. “The sheer number of articles that have appeared last week about the Under Armour jerseys shows that it’s already been a successful marketing campaign,” says Matt Powell, an analyst at Sports­ONESource, which tracks sportswear sales in the United States.

It’s not the first time that Plank has challenged industry giant Nike on its own turf. On the eve of Under Armour’s entry into the Nike-dominated $2.5-billion U.S. basketball shoe market last year, Plank boasted that it was only a matter of time before he owned the category. “I’m 38,” he told Bloomberg news. “I’ve got a long time [to get there].” As for Nike, he said, “those guys are old.”

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Loonie loses ground over debt worries in the U.S. and Europe

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 18, 2011 at 11:54 AM - 0 Comments

Jittery investors punished the Canadian dollar on Monday morning, sending it lower as they fled towards safe havens such as bullion. Ironically, the greenback strengthened against the loonie, even as the market fretted about the drawn-out debt-ceiling debate that has engulfed Washington. The Canadian dollar fell 0.55 of a cent to 104.24 cents U.S. Traders were also anxious about debt levels in Europe, even after the Friday release of the results of stress tests of the continent’s banks that were supposed to reassure the market. Those tests, though, didn’t consider a scenario in which a eurozone country defaults, something that might very well happen in Greece, experts say.

Toronto Star

10 reasons why there has never been a better time to be a Canadian

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 1, 2011 at 2:59 PM - 3 Comments

At 144, we are in better shape in most every sense than a long list of wealthy, developed nations. Our Canada Day special is a reminder that by many global measures we are a blessed bastion of privilege, peace, freedom–and big roomy houses. Read on to find out the ten reasons why there has never been a better time to be Canadian and be sure to check out the full story here.

Why it’s the best time ever to be a Canadian

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 1, 2011 at 1:20 PM - 11 Comments

Dave Chidley/CP; Illustration by Taylor Shute

We are Canada. At 144 years we are neither young nor old, as nations go. And nations do come and do go, it bears remembering. You don’t have to be very old to appreciate that the world map that occupied a corner of your childhood classroom is a relic of another age; that borders once drawn in blood aren’t indelible at all, they are just lines to be moved, or bent or erased by popular will. Yet, here we are, still in this together, and doing rather well.

Like any worthy anniversary, it is deserving of celebration but also of the appreciation that future years together aren’t guaranteed, they must be earned, and mutually agreed upon. Back when Canada was a mere pup of 115 years, Ralph Klein, then the brash young mayor of a brash young Calgary, called Canada, “perhaps the only country in the world held together by curiosity.” He asked if such a confederation of interests and regions can endure. “[N]o one is quite prepared to give up on her yet,” he said, “as if we all have some lingering desire to see how this ongoing exercise in nation-building ends.”

And why not? No. 143 was not the easiest of years, but it was largely free of any soul-sucking existential debate on Canada’s future. There was a federal election, and no one died in the process. Economic uncertainty lingers, but we emerged stronger than the year before, and healthier in most every sense than a long list of wealthy, developed nations. And, yes, let’s not lose sight of that inarguable fact: we are rich.

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The ones to watch

By macleans.ca - Sunday, June 5, 2011 at 12:15 PM - 14 Comments

If Malcolm Gladwell is right, and it really takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a craft, the following 11 Canadians—all of whom are younger than 25—have been incredibly busy. Among this gifted bunch is a 13-year-old figure skater who recently became the youngest junior men’s champion in the nation’s history, a 15-year-old whose research could change how autistic children are educated, a multi-award-winning film director who’s only 16, and a 23-year-old small-town mayor with some big ideas—and a day job.

And while these phenoms aren’t household names, this won’t be the last you hear of them. In January 2000, Maclean’s named a young guy from Burnaby, B.C., one of the “faces of the future.” At the time, the 24-year-old had just landed a gig as the opening act for Dionne Warwick, and told the magazine that if he ever became rich and famous he’d take his parents to Paris and buy his grandfather season tickets to the Vancouver Canucks. That young singer’s name was Michael Bublé.

Photograph by Richmond Lam

Léa Clermont-Dion – Activism

“I’m not an activist.” These aren’t words you’d expect to hear from Léa Clermont-Dion. After all, the 20-year-old native of Gore, Que., has dedicated herself to the issues of body acceptance, gender equality and the portrayal of women in the fashion world for much of her life. At 14, she organized a university conference bringing together Quebec’s best-known feminists. In 2007, at 16, Clermont-Dion, who suffered from anorexia herself in her early teens, and Jacinthe Veillette started a petition calling for the promotion of healthy body image and an end to the “hypersexualization” of women, particularly in the fashion world. The petition, which proposed a seven-point charter, garnered 20,000 signatures; Clermont-Dion lobbied the Association of Canadian Advertisers, which along with several other media, fashion and education groups endorsed the charter’s principles. Her initiative also caught the eye of Christine St-Pierre, the province’s culture minister, and in 2010, the Quebec government adopted la Charte de l’image corporelle saine et diversifiée (the charter for a healthy and diverse body image), which seeks to lessen the instances of body issues among women and men. It is a first of its kind in North America.

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Canadian Tire buys Forzani Group

By macleans.ca - Monday, May 9, 2011 at 3:21 PM - 0 Comments

Canadian Tire has agreed to purchase Forzani Group’s chain of sporting goods outlets for $771 million in cash. Forzani, which operates the Sport Chek, and National Sports brands, is Canada’s largest sports retailer, with about 500 stores across Canada. The purchase price is based on a bid of $26.50 per share, or about 50 per cent more than Forzani’s latest closing price. Canadian Tire CEO Stephen Wetmore expects the deal will help his brand attract younger customers.

Bloomberg

Andrew Potter on this election's impact on business and the economy

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, May 4, 2011 at 11:14 AM - 0 Comments

Berkshire comes clean on Sokolgate

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, April 27, 2011 at 6:37 PM - 1 Comment

Warren Buffett got a lot of things seriously wrong about the David Sokol-insider trading affair, starting with this: When Buffett announced the resignation of Sokol, one of his top-lieutenants, amid questionable stock trades, he declared it would be his last comments on the matter. Turns out, not so much.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Audit Committee authorized Buffett to release an in-depth report today which states in no uncertain terms that Sokol breached the company’s insider trading policies. (See our original story, Say It Ain’t So, Warren, for background.)

From the report:

His purchases of Lubrizol shares while serving as a representative of Berkshire Hathaway in connection with a possible business combination with Lubrizol violated company policies, includingBerkshire Hathaway’s Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and its Insider Trading Policies and Procedures. … By engaging in such questionable conduct, Mr. Sokol threatened Berkshire Hathaway’s reputation–or would have done so had he remained with the Company.

Given the huge uproar over Sokol’s actions, this report is an important first step to repairing the damage to Berkshire’s cherished reputation. The question is, will it be enough? The release comes just three days before Berkshire’s annual general meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, and a lot will depend on how Buffett handles the matter there. The key being whether he apologizes. While it was Sokol who placed the trades and kept information from his boss, Buffett trusted him and did not probe deeper into the matter. And as chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett is ultimately responsible for any actions by his employees that damage the company’s reputation. Buffett has a long history of saying sorry, but this could be the most important apology of his career.

Anyway, on to the report. There’s a lot that’s fascinating in the plainly-worded disclosure:

-Berkshire is contemplating legal action against Sokol “to recover any damage the Company has sustained, or his trading profits, or both.” The company says will also cooperate with any government investigation into the matter, though it doesn’t come out and say that there is an investigation.

-Last October investment bankers at Citi brought a list of 18 chemical companies to Sokol as possible takeover targets. It was Sokol who narrowed the list down to one name, Lubrizol. That was two months before Sokol made his first purchase of Lubrizol shares.

-On March 14, after Berkshire announced the takeover of Lubrizol, a banker from Citi congratulated Buffett on the deal and took credit for bringing it to Berkshire’s attention. Until then Buffett had just assumed that Sokol had owned his shares in the company for some time and thought it was a great company Berkshire could buy. Suddenly, on the day of the big announcement, Buffett gets sideswiped by the revelation the deal had been cooked up by investment bankers. One can only imagine what was going throug his head at that point.

-The statement Buffett issued at the end of March announcing Sokol’s resignation was absent a passage Sokol had objected to, but which makes it clear Buffett knew Sokol’s actions stunk to high heaven.

Mr. Buffett deleted from the release the one passage Mr. Sokol said was inaccurate: a passage that implied that Mr. Sokol had resigned because he must have known the Lubrizol trades would likely hurt his chances of being Mr. Buffett’s successor. Mr. Sokol told Mr. Buffett that he had not hoped to be Mr. Buffett’s successor, and was resigning for reasons unrelated to those trades.

-The Audit committee all but calls Sokol a liar. It notes that Sokol “left unchanged” key points in the draft version of Buffett’s statement about his resignation that were untrue. The final version of the statement said Sokol ”did not know what Lubrizol’s reaction would be” when in fact he knew full well the company was keen to be acquired by Berkshire.

-The report is also notable for what it doesn’t discuss. After Sokol resigned, he appeared on CNBC. In the interview he said he’d done nothing wrong, and that Charlie Munger, Buffett’s investing partner, had owned shares in Chinese electric car company BYD before Berkshire acquired it at Munger’s suggestion. The Audit committee doesn’t go into this trade at all. Having said that, the circumstance are much different. Munger had owned his shares for a couple of years, fully disclosed his shareholdings to Buffett and was in no way involved in the deal to buy BYD.

BTW, for what it’s worth, I see the latest episode of Warren Buffett’s Secret Millionaire’s Club, an Internet cartoon that aims to teach kids about business and investing, is all about the importance of keeping a good reputation. It’s oh-so-appropriately titled “Cancel My Reputation.”

In conversation: Brett Wilson

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, March 14, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 19 Comments

Photographs By Chris Bolin

Brett Wilson, the Calgary-based investment banker and philanthropist who came to national prominence as the “dragon with a heart” on the highly rated CBC reality television show Dragon’s Den, is now no dragon at all. He and the CBC parted ways following difficult contract negotiations in which he says the broadcaster insisted he never mention his association with the CBC or the show during public appearances or in promoting his own work. Wilson had been the most active investor on the show, which sees entrepreneurs seeking capital pitch their ideas before a panel of “dragons.”

Q: Your departure from the show has garnered a good deal of attention—why do you think people care so much?

A: First of all I was surprised that CBC issued a press release saying I was leaving. I thought I would just sort of fade into obscurity. I happened to be getting on a plane when they issued that release, so I didn’t have a chance to see it for four or five hours. In the meantime there were an awful lot of phone calls to my office asking why, how come? I think there’s an irony in the eyes of some viewers—or some media—that a dragon couldn’t get a deal negotiated for his own purposes, or his own contract, if you will. And I suspect there is.

Q: You’ve challenged the CBC to dole out what you’ve called “constructive criticism as opposed to abuse” on the show. What prompted you to make that challenge?

A: I want it to respect the intelligence of the viewing community—you know, there isn’t a business school in the country that isn’t paying attention to this show. I was the lead deal-making dragon. I don’t know how many deals the other dragons have actually done or closed, but I managed to get 60 done on the show, and we’ve papered 30, and 31 should be done in the next couple weeks. That’s where my own fan base says, “Thank you for showing us how to do deals.” It’s easy to say, “No,” it takes no courage, no brains and no wallet to criticize. Criticism comes free. Action comes at some cost, and I’ve been pretty active. Will the 30 investments I’ve made all work out? Absolutely not. I suspect I’ll write off four or five in the next year because they’re stumbling. But there’s four or five that could become iconic brands in Canada because of the power of the entrepreneur. Any one of those top-five investments will pay for all 30. So I take a portfolio approach.

Q: Listening to you outline your approach—that a handful of your investments will likely pay for those that fail—is “dragon with a heart”
less about generosity or emotion than it is a sound approach to investing?

A: I invest in people. I get value from helping people, and I get value on my money. So both of those make sense. I choose partners based on the people I want to do business with because business plans evolve—we stumble, we trip, we jump, we leap, we go to different plateaus—but the people in whom we’ve invested are still the people. My partners are a core of my success. That’s been my success over the years. In the investing world I do get value for helping people, but I don’t give up financial return to get that.

Q: Some argue you’ve been Kevin O’Leary’s foil, that the CBC built the show on a Kevin-versus-Brett narrative. Were you ever coached into participating in that kind of dynamic?

A: Just the opposite. When I first tried out for the show, the commentary from CBC was that I wasn’t mean enough. I said, “Look, if it means being a prick, I’m not interested. If it means being tough when you need to be tough, check my credentials, my success, my partners, and my life, and just know I can get there.” I think in the eyes of some of the people who were putting the show together, they thought the Kevin-esque approach was typical—that he was your normal, tough-as-nails, chew-’em-up, spit-’em-out businessman. I would suggest just the opposite. I run into a lot of people who take a very hands-on, people-centric approach to investing. It’s not that Kevin’s wrong and Brett’s right. It’s that the range exists.

Q: What’s called reality television, or “factual entertainment,” as the CBC prefers to call it, are masterpieces of editing.

A: I call it “contrived reality,” because it is orchestrated. Now, when I say “orchestrated,” the dragons were never coached, we were never told what to say. To put credit where it’s due, CBC’s done a fabulous job with this format. I’m told both inside and outside CBC that CBC’s version of Dragon’s Den is used as the gold standard globally against the other 16 or 18 or 20 that exist around the world. I’m talking about how to put the icing on the cake, here, not saying throw away the cake.

Q: But it must be an odd sensation to watch how your exchanges are shaped in the cutting room. What’s that experience been like?

A: In the early seasons it was frustrating. One of my favourite questions I ask every entrepreneur I invest in is, “How much time and how much money have you got invested in this idea?” There’s no wrong answer, but I do need to know. Have you been working on it for 10 years and you’re beating a dead horse? Or did this just come to you a week ago and you’ve got daddy’s money behind you? Or is this your heart and soul? I don’t think that question has ever made it to air. CBC is looking for that quick repartee, what you would call the juicy moment. I know that’s what they’re chasing in the editing room, and I’m completely okay with that. They own the mouse that does the cutting.

Q: But do they make the exchanges sharper than they really are?

A: I would suggest to you that they edit out some of the heated exchanges. It doesn’t get nasty but sometimes it might be a little bit too snippy, a little bit too rude.

Q: What’s the best advice you’ve given?

A: People who come on the show overestimate the share of market they can achieve. First they guesstimate the market—let’s say $1 billion in widgets can be sold next year and they say, “Well, jeez, I can get one per cent of that market, therefore I can make $10 million.” My response is, it might cost you $50 million to pursue that slice of the market, and you don’t have that money. I don’t care if you can make it—if you can’t sell it, there’s no point. Understanding your market—who will buy it and who will buy it at a profitable price—is key.

Q: You’ve done 60 deals on the show and about 30 have led to cheques being written. What happens to those 30 that don’t work?

A: Of those 30, I would say 10 were people who didn’t ultimately want to do a deal—they weren’t ready. There were another 10 where due diligence didn’t hold up. In one case someone on the show said, “I have a signed memorandum of understanding,” which turned out was an email expressing interest in a deal. There’s a big gap. I would say the other 10 would be ones where, when we did the homework, we just weren’t comfortable. In one case—again, names don’t matter—I just became uncomfortable with the entrepreneur. I didn’t like the way my people were treated. So I pulled the pin and said, “I will not tolerate that kind of abuse,” if you want to call it that, “of my own people.” You know—kissing me and kicking my staff. That’s not a relationship that’s a basis for anything. Not every marriage has to be consummated.

Q: Some of the pitches can be heartbreaking. I remember seeing an engineer who’d designed a device that would open Freezies for his kid, and he’d sunk $250,000 of his money into it. And he was turned away on the show with five outs. I’m not sure if you remember the case.

A: Oh, I remember it very, very well. He had an amazing product, it was beautifully engineered. He could make it—but he couldn’t sell enough of them to justify his investment. It was one of those sad moments for me where I’m looking, going, “You know what? This isn’t a product that the market needs.” On the flip side, it’s that passion, that sometimes blind belief in oneself, that allows some businesses and products to move forward.

Q: I also watched as you listened to 18-year-old Ben Gulak pitch his motorized unicycle, the Uno, and you were clearly enchanted.

A: Here was a kid who I looked at and thought—you know what? Even if Uno doesn’t work exactly as it’s been invented, I want to be this guy’s go-to, his brain trust, I want to be his wallet for the next idea. Because coming out of a kid who’s 18, who’s built this Uno literally out of scrap parts in his family garage, who’s been accepted to MIT, that’s a kid I wouldn’t mind investing in. You know, the evaluations that were applied to the original round of financing for Google and Yahoo and eBay and Amazon and Facebook probably made no sense either.

Q: You’ve hinted that a television show around philanthropy could be in your future. I think it’s fair to say the received wisdom goes that people like watching greed, or the consequences of greed. Can you make compelling TV out of philanthropy?

A: Time will tell. I would entertain putting myself in front of the camera again if it was to celebrate entrepreneurship or celebrate philanthropy. I happen to be one of those who still thinks a good-news television network makes sense. I understand that “if it bleeds, it leads.” But I also think there’s an awful lot of people who are tired of the irrelevance. Let’s be serious here—The Bachelorette shows are completely irrelevant. They make interesting TV, but there’s no learning, no education, no nothing other than a fairly low-brow way of spending an hour watching some guy bouncing from bed to bed.

Chart of the week: Investor comeback

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, March 2, 2011 at 10:29 AM - 0 Comments

Chart source: INVESTMENT FUNDS INSTITUTE OF CANADA; UBS

Canadians put $3.1 billion into mutual funds at the beginning of the year, the largest outlay since 2007 and the third highest on record.

Fish stick empire

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 11:40 AM - 1 Comment

Terry G. Conrad

On the surface, it would seem like a bad time for Nova Scotia’s High Liner Foods Inc., which makes frozen fish sticks and other prepared seafoods, to go fishing for an acquisition in Iceland. In recent months, local pop star Björk has mustered a remarkably successful campaign aimed at overturning another Canadian-led takeover effort: Magma Energy Corp.’s recently completed purchase of geothermal power producer HS Orka. Just last week, Björk held a three-day karaoke marathon that helped to boost signatories of a local petition against the Magma deal to more than 46,000, or about 15 per cent of Iceland’s population, causing Iceland’s prime minister to hint that a public referendum on the deal could yet be forthcoming.

But that hasn’t stopped High Liner, headquartered in picturesque Lunenburg, N.S., and known for its salty, grey-bearded fisherman logo, from steaming ahead with its plans to buy Icelandic Group, which controls a network of independent seafood processing companies in Europe, North America and Asia. If successful, High Liner, already a leader in Canada, would become a major force in the huge U.S. market supplying seafood to supermarkets and restaurants. There’s just one problem: Icelandic’s owners, a consortium of public pension funds called Framtakssjóður Íslands, aren’t interested in selling—at least not to High Liner.

Kelly Nelson, High Liner’s chief financial officer, says the company has been eyeing Icelandic for years and was assured that if the company’s foreign processing businesses ever went on the block, High Liner would have an opportunity to bid in an open auction (producers located in Iceland itself aren’t believed to be for sale). “We found out that they have entered into exclusive discussions with a German private equity firm called Triton,” Nelson says, noting that Icelandic has been in a difficult financial position for a few years, having been previously owned by a state-run bank set up after the 2008 financial crisis. “We also found out through different sources in Iceland that maybe this was an inside deal being cooked up, and we didn’t think this was fair to the Icelandic pension plans that own these assets, or other bidders.”

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'The stock market is for suckers'

By Jason Kirby - Monday, January 24, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 52 Comments

Justin Sullivan/GETTY IMAGES

Were it not for the source and recipients of the email—From: Goldman Sachs, To: Our most outrageously rich clients—it would have read like one of those Nigerian investment scams that slip through spam filters now and then. “When you have a chance I wanted to find a time to discuss a highly confidential and time-sensitive investment opportunity,” the secretive missive began. But this was clearly no shady dispatch from Lagos. What investment bank Goldman Sachs offered by way of the emails, sent out to thousands of its most valuable high-net-worth clients in early January, was the chance for them to buy a piece of the hottest company in America: Facebook.

Since the social networking site infused itself into every facet of our lives, investors have anticipated the day when the company would take its place in capitalist folklore beside Microsoft, Netscape, Apple and Google. Everything seemed to be in place—the phenomenal growth, chief geek Mark Zuckerberg’s rapid ascent to Bill Gates-ian prominence, The Movie!! It all suggested we were about to witness one of those rare moments when the spark of innovation meets the greatest wealth-creation machine the world has ever known: the American stock market.

Only that’s not how things have unfolded. In its email to clients, Goldman wasn’t talking about a public stock offering for Facebook. Instead, the bank, along with a Russian investment firm, injected US$500 million into Facebook’s coffers by way of a purely private transaction. Goldman, in turn, set up a fund through which wealthy clients could own those Facebook shares themselves, for a minimum of US$2 million. Based on that valuation, Facebook emerged a colossus worth more than US$50 billion.

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Good work, at times

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 1:40 PM - 0 Comments

Thomas Northcut/GETTY IMAGES

While employment in Canada was up in December 2010, one perceived drawback was that the share of part-time workers also jumped. Full-time employment edged up a solid 1.9 per cent over the previous 12 months, but the rate at which the economy added part-time jobs was almost double, at 3.4 per cent. The proportion of part-timers in the working population has been on the rise since the mid-2000s, but the trend has accelerated in the past two years. Economists worry the high share of part-time workers, which neared 20 per cent at the end of 2010, is an unhealthy side effect of the recession. But while about a third of Canadians continue to prefer full-time jobs, according to Statistics Canada, there are signs that fewer work hours are becoming a matter of choice.

A 2010 Telus/Harris/Decima survey found that 89 per cent of Canadians report that offering flexible work hours makes an employer more attractive. After salary levels, the study revealed, it was the most important factor for employees looking for a new job. And creative work arrangements reducing time in the cubicle benefit employers too. In 2009, the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that 78 per cent of U.S. companies thought that offering so-called “flexwork” decreases turnover rates.

The rising ranks of part-timers can partly be explained by a jump in the number of older workers choosing to put off retirement. But it could also be a symptom of an increasingly gender-neutral job market, say experts. In the Netherlands, for instance, scores of young professionals are happily opting for four-day workweeks to dedicate more time to the little ones. And as “daddy days” are reportedly no longer taboo even in high-pressure, competitive environments such as law firms, working part-time is losing the stigma that made it by definition the choice of career-shy women in the past, reports the New York Times.

And as employers compete to attract talented workers—especially generation Y-ers—offering more part-time work options is becoming a must-have.

Could Apple buy Canada?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 6 Comments

Apple Inc., the maker of iPhones, iPads and other must-have gadgets, crossed the US$300-billion market capitalization threshold earlier this month, making it the second most valuable publicly traded company in the world behind oil giant Exxon Mobil. The milestone has caused some industry watchers to murmur about the possibility that Apple could be The One—not as in a Matrix-type saviour, but the first corporation to crack the trillion-dollar mark, possibly as early as 2013.

With its shares trading around US$334 each, the current valuation of the California company, headed by CEO Steve Jobs, is already bigger than the GDP of several developed countries, including Denmark and Israel. A valuation of US$1 trillion would put it near par with Canada’s GDP of US$1.34 trillion, a measure of the value of all the goods and services produced in the country annually.

James Altucher, a hedge fund manager and financial columnist for CNBC, recently suggested that growth projections for Apple “easily make a rationale” for Apple to reach the trillion-dollar mark. While he throws out a lot of numbers to make his case—growing iPhone and App Store sales coupled with enviable 30 per cent margins—his argument boils down to the often irrational love affair people have with Apple’s products. “I have a 30-year relationship with Apple,” he confesses. “I love it. I don’t think I have a real relationship with any other company on the planet. That’s why it’s going to be a trillion-dollar market cap.”

But it’s worth recalling that there have been previous contenders for the title. Back in 2000, analysts were saying the same thing about Cisco Systems, which designs computer networking equipment and software. After all, what could be more important in a Web-connected world than a company that makes all those connections possible? At one point, Cisco’s market valuation hit US$480 billion.

Then the tech bubble burst. Today, Cisco is still the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment, but its market cap is only about US$116 billion. Then again, it wasn’t as though people were lining up around the block every time Cisco took the wraps off a new edge router.

No-name logos

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 1 Comment

Starbucks

Starbucks’s decision to drop its name from its two-decade-old logo led to a swarm of negative reaction online, in the news and in under-caffeinated lineups everywhere. It was pretty predictable—numerous studies have shown that customers loathe label-fiddling, as the likes of Wal-Mart, Pepsi and the Gap (which was forced to revert back to its old logo due to negative reaction over its redesign) have all discovered in recent years.

But marketing experts say there is an upside. If successful, the move could lead Starbucks to the same level of über-brand recognition as the wordless Apple and Nike logos. This would come at the perfect time, as Starbucks is currently planning to increase its expansion into international, non-English speaking markets, with its number of stores set to more than triple (from about 400 to 1,500) in China alone. Now it just has to hope that “the logo formerly known as Starbucks” actually catches on.

China hits the hardwood

By Jason Kirby - Thursday, January 20, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 1 Comment

Ron Turenne/NBA/Getty Images

In early January, as the Phoenix Suns basketball team struggled to turn around a disappointing season, two questions surrounded point guard Steve Nash—would the team trade him to another city, and what’s with those Chinese sneakers anyway?

After a 15-year tie-up with Nike, the B.C. native announced he had signed a sponsorship deal with Chinese shoemaker Luyou. It wasn’t a complete switch. Nash will still wear his old Nikes on U.S. courts, while he’ll lace up in his Luyous on trips to the Middle Kingdom. But as Chinese shoemakers stomp into the U.S. market, they’ve determined the two keys to success are a lookalike Nike-style swoosh logo, and an endorsement deal with a major NBA athlete.

Over the past couple of years, some two dozen NBAers have stepped into Chinese brand shoes. The Boston Celtics’ Shaquille O’Neal sports Li Ning sneakers. His teammate Kevin Garnett wears shoes from a company called Anta. Meanwhile a number of rookies, including Patrick Patterson of the Houston Rockets, have signed with Peak Sports. Unlike Nash, most of the players wear their Chinese sneakers during games. And while the overwhelming majority of fans will have never heard of any of those brands, the companies are banking that will eventually change. “A brand doesn’t exist anywhere but inside the minds of the customers,” says Joe Benson, a brand strategist with Brand Blueprint in Boston. “What the Chinese want Steve Nash to do is bring in some positive associations with the sneakers.”

The moves are part of a push by Chinese companies to establish identifiable global brands. On the surface, the sneaker business seems perfectly suited to the task. Western consumers already know American-brand sneakers are all made in China, quite possibly in the same factories and by the same workers as those of the new Chinese brands. The deals with pro athletes are the first step to getting the shoes onto store shelves in the U.S. Last year, Li Ning—a company launched by a former Olympic gold gymnast of the same name—opened its first U.S. retail store 20 minutes down the road from Nike’s headquarters in Portland. In 2009, Li Ning reported sales of $1.3 billion and has more than 7,000 stores in China.

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Target buys Zellers leases from Hudson’s Bay Co.

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 13, 2011 at 11:48 AM - 48 Comments

Minneapolis-based retailer chain Target has purchased the leases of 220 Zellers store locations in Canada for $1.8 billion. Two cash payments of $912.5 million will be made in May and September of this year, and Target will convert 100 to 150 Zellers locations into Target stores, while selling off the remaining locations to other retailers. The purchase reportedly has its perks for the Canadian economy: It is expected to create jobs, Target will be investing $1 billion in revamping the store locations, and Hudson’s Bay Co. can now focus the Bay brand, having sold off an underperforming asset at a profit.

CBC

Thinking local, acting loco?

By Andrew Potter - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 37 Comments

Photography Cole Garside

The year 2010 marked the moment when the locavore movement went thoroughly mainstream, with even Wal-Mart getting with the program. But while it is invariably promoted under the guise of progressive values of living healthy, building community and preserving the environment, residents of Hamilton recently discovered the dark side of the cult of local.

Like the city itself, the Hamilton Farmers’ Market is a no-nonsense place. Along with the usual stalls of locally grown seasonal produce, it has long featured vendors selling imported foods—Asian fruit, Colombian coffee, Polish baked goods, Lebanese pita, etc.—making the market an unpretentiously cosmopolitan affair.

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Renault suspends three top managers

By macleans.ca - Friday, January 7, 2011 at 12:21 PM - 3 Comments

Carmaker Renault fired three top managers who leaked “strategic, intellectual and technological assets” on Thursday. They gave no more details than that, but insiders told Le Figaro and AFP that details of the electric cars that Renault plans to launch in 2014 were leaked to a Chinese company. France’s Industry Minister Eric Besson said Thursday that the country is the target of an “economic war.”

France24

Hot, fresh, and delivered straight to your door

By Sarah Elton - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments

Seema Pabari, president of Toronto’s Tiffinday, delivers the hot lunches herself. Most of her clients are young, white males in the finance and IT industries. | Photography Sandy Nicholson

Tiffin arrived just before lunch time in a Honda Fit. The three containers, packed in a thermal bag, were still warm to the touch. There was hot aloo gobi (a potato and cauliflower curry sprinkled with fresh coriander), a flatbread called paratha, and two cardamom-coconut pancakes. All the dishes looked homemade, but the food came from Tiffinday, a business serving hot prepared lunches in those distinctive tiffin boxes to hungry people in Toronto’s downtown.

The tiffin carrier, a stainless-steel stackable lunch container that is used all over India, has made the trip around the globe and is now growing in popularity in this country—though with a Canadian twist. “It’s a vertical version of a horizontal meal,” said Krishnendu Ray, an assistant professor of food studies at New York University, who grew up in India. In high school, he recalls, he’d trade his egg salad sandwich for his friend’s tiffin. “You have the dahl, the rice and the curry all served simultaneously,” he said. These days in Vancouver, you can pick up a two-tier stainless-steel tiffin, full with curry, for $12 at the Granville Island food court take-away Curry 2U, and bring it back another day for a $5.99 refill. In Calgary, Tiffin Curry and Roti House offers a thermal insulated tiffin box (it can get cold in Calgary) that they fill with two curries and two rice pulaos. They will even deliver them to boardroom lunches. In addition to Tiffinday’s new venture in Toronto, there are plenty of home-based businesses in that city’s suburbs, such as Komal Shah’s home-cooked Gujarati-style food that her customer base of about 100 picks up in one of the stainless steel containers. “Some people have no time for cooking,” she said, explaining the popularity of her service.

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A built-in advantage

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 12:40 PM - 11 Comments

Tim Smith/Rogue Collective

Competitive spirit might run through the veins of any good businessman, but a handful of Prairie companies say they can’t win the war against some unlikely rivals in the building supply trade—Hutterite colonists. Frustrated by a steady drift of metal roof and siding orders to Hutterite-owned competitors, building supply companies are pressuring the Manitoba government to take action, arguing the market is tilted in favour of Hutterite enterprises because colony members work for free, and because their firms are exempt from certain taxes.

The Hutterites are an Anabaptist sect whose adherents live communally, sharing resources and property on farming colonies that speckle the southern Prairies and parts of the U.S. plains. For the most part, they’ve coexisted peacefully with neighbours, but tensions began rising in the 1990s, when some colonies turned to commercial enterprises to help support their way of life, raising the unexpected question of whether communal living constitutes an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

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Keep a close eye out for the signs

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 16, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Getty Images

Nov. 12, 2005, remains the darkest day in the history of Windsor’s Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital. That’s when staff anesthesiologist Marc Daniel ambushed and stabbed his ex-girlfriend, nurse Lori Dupont, in a second-floor recovery room. Their colleagues worked desperately, but unsuccessfully, to save Dupont. Later, when the escaped Daniel was brought in with no vital signs after an overdose, they put aside personal feelings and almost saved him too.

In 2007, a coroner’s jury studying the incident made a recommendation to the Ontario Ministry of Labour: noting that literally dozens of Hôtel-Dieu employees had been aware of the danger Daniel presented, they requested “a review of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) to examine the feasibility of including domestic violence (from someone in the workplace).” Domestic violence was added to the act in June, under provincial Bill 168. But the words in parentheses mysteriously disappeared along the way, which has left Ontario employers with awkward new responsibilities and its workers with diminished personal privacy.

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