Farewell, then, Lazaridis and Balsillie

By Paul Wells - Sunday, January 22, 2012 at 10:58 PM - 0 Comments

It’s actually closer to say Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, the co-CEOs of Research in Motion, are taking a big step away from the spotlight as they hand over CEO duties to a German guy named Thorsten Heins. Balsillie, the slim guy who (theoretically) took care of the business side, will remain a director of the company. Lazaridis, the silver-haired tech and ideas guy, will lead a new “innovation committee” of the board. But yeah, basically they’re no longer in control of the company’s direction. Continue…

Has RIM lost its way?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Reuters/Robert Galbraith

With confidence in the BlackBerry platform waning and calls for a management shake-up growing louder, the last thing Research In Motion Ltd. co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie needed earlier this month was a network meltdown that left subscribers across five continents with spotty access to email for more than three days. It was perhaps a further bit of bad luck that the source of the outage was traced to RIM’s European headquarters in Slough, a dreary suburb of London that also happened to be the setting of the BBC TV series The Office, a sitcom about the pitiable lives of employees of a second-rate paper company toiling beneath a hapless manager played by Ricky Gervais.

Though RIM, based in Waterloo, Ont., is no Wernham Hogg (the name of the fictional paper firm in the TV series), the scramble by Canada’s tech superstar to diagnose, correct and explain the biggest network outage in its history left many observers shaking their heads. The disruptions began on Oct. 10 and immediately impacted users in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South America. RIM said the following day that the problem had been resolved, only to suffer more disruptions that eventually found their way to North America. The company later revealed that it had suffered a core switch failure in its network operations centre (a sort of central sorting facility for BlackBerry email), and that its backup systems had failed, too.

By the time Lazaridis appeared in a low-tech Web video (standing before a drab beige background) to issue a rare apology on Oct. 13, critics had already characterized RIM’s response to the crisis as inadequate. “The worldwide outages we experienced last week were unfortunate,” Lazaridis told a crowd of developers earlier this week at a BlackBerry conference in San Francisco, where RIM unveiled its new, next-generation BBX mobile platform. He added that RIM is studying what went wrong and is focused on “making this right” with customers.

Continue…

Newsmakers: Sept. 15-22

By Alex Ballingall, Jonathon Gatehouse, Cathy Gulli, Nicholas Köhler, Chris Sorensen, and Patricia Treble - Friday, September 23, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Wimborne/Reuters

Siren car swan song

The last of America’s most popular police car, the Ford Crown Victoria, rolled off an assembly line in St. Thomas, Ont., last week. The Ford plant closure, first announced in 2009 at the nadir of North America’s manufacturing doldrums, puts 1,100 people out of work in the rust-belt town, best known as the place where Jumbo, the P.T. Barnum circus elephant, died after being hit by a train in 1885. Big and blocky, the Crown Vic had long been popular with police departments and cab companies for its durability and roominess. Still, it got just 10 km a litre and had sold poorly—yet another dead jumbo in St. Thomas.

A scrumbag

It was just six weeks ago that Mike Tindall married Zara Phillips, the Queen’s granddaughter. But the honeymoon is definitely over for the muscular captain of England’s Rugby World Cup squad. While out celebrating a tournament-opening victory over Argentina this week, Tindall and his teammates got tipsy and scrummed several young ladies in the bar. Good clean fun, until the papers back home got hold of the photos of Tindall canoodling with a “mystery blond.” We are not amused.

Tough assignment

Shortly before U.S. Marine Sgt. Dakota Meyer received the Medal of Honor for rushing into an Afghan “killing zone” to rescue 36 troops in 2009, the 23-year-old and his family met privately with President Barack Obama. They weren’t alone. João Silva, a New York Times photographer whose legs were blown off by a land mine last October in Afghanistan, was invited by Meyer and Obama to capture the meeting. Silva found the assignment—his first outside the confines of military hospitals where he is undergoing extensive rehabilitation—difficult on prosthetic legs. Though the photographs were deemed “strong” by his paper, Silva said, “I wasn’t getting the shots. I was missing the shots.”

Billionaire boys’ club

RIM’s fall from tech-industry grace has hit a symbolic milestone for Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, co-CEOs of the Waterloo, Ont.-based company, who have lost their status as billionaires. Both Balsillie and Lazaridis own five per cent of the company shares, a chunk that was worth an estimated US$1.9 billion in February. Now their shares are worth about US$640 million, according to Bloomberg estimates. This month, Jaguar Financial even advised RIM to sell itself off. With Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android-based phones chipping away at RIM’s former glory, maybe BlackBerrys just aren’t as sexy anymore.

Wilderness tipoff

Kristoffer Clausen became a folk hero in his native Norway when he spent a year living off the harsh land with just a rifle, fishing rod and a dog for companionship. A book recounting his adventures, which began in 2009, became a bestseller and spawned a TV series and even a sponsorship deal. However, a local newspaper recently revealed the story was just too good to be true. It turns out that he’d supplemented his spartan live-off-the-land lifestyle by shopping in malls, living in a Swedish cottage for a month and even renting a car. “I’m sorry for doing it,” he finally confessed. “I’ve been an idiot.”

Don’t stop believing

If the myth persists that housewives lead boring lives, look to Michaele Salahi for proof of the contrary. The star of the (cancelled) Real Housewives of D.C. was reported missing by her bankrupt wine merchant husband Tareq after she disappeared last week. Six hours later, the rakish blond turned up in Tennessee—where she was romancing Neal Schon, guitarist of the ’80s band Journey, who described their relationship as “intimate and passionate.” This attention-grabbing charade should come as no shock: Salahi and her husband crashed a White House dinner in 2009, claiming they were invited, and she once fibbed about working as a Washington Redskins cheerleader. Why lie when your real life is this unbelievable?

Alberta’s great race

Gary Mar had a good week. The prospective leader of Alberta’s indefatigable Progressive Conservative government handily won the first round of voting in the party’s leadership race, winning 41 per cent of the tally at a convention in Calgary. Just a few days later, Mar gained requisite right-wing “cred” when two fellow leadership candidates—Ted Morton and Rick Orman—emerged from his campaign bus to give him their endorsement. The upstart Wildrose party has threatened to dig into the PCs’ right flank with rhetoric that echoes that of the Tea Party. So it’s little wonder that Mar was all smiles as he and his two big-name supporters spoke of his fiscal conservatism and economic level-headedness. After all, if Mar wins, he’ll immediately become Alberta’s newest PC premier: perennial top dog in the province.

Rehab? No, no, no.

Canada’s youngest multiple killer, who went by the online handle Runaway Devil, has resurfaced as a freshman at a Calgary university. The girl, who can’t be named by law, was just 12 when she convinced her 23-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Allan Steinke, to kill her mother, father and eight-year-old brother inside their Medicine Hat, Alta., home back in 2006. Her 10-year sentence, part of which was spent at an Edmonton psychiatric hospital, will be completed one year after she is scheduled to graduate in 2015. But the girl’s lawyer now says her rehabilitation plan has been derailed after the Calgary Herald revealed details about her studies. A sentencing review has been postponed.

Oh Jackie

Jacqueline Kennedy was just 34 and four months a widow when she submitted to a recorded interview with Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a historian and one-time aide to her husband, president John F. Kennedy. The chat is part of an oral history of Camelot released last week that reveals a woman of sharp judgment. Indira Gandhi, later India’s PM, was “pushy” and “bitter.” French president Charles de Gaulle was an “egomaniac.” Martin Luther King Jr., meanwhile, was “a phony” who carried on extramarital affairs. She reserves her harshest criticism for former Canadian PM John Diefenbaker, whom she met during a visit with her husband in May 1961 and calls “painful.” During a lunch, the Dief “insisted on telling all these Churchill stories . . . calling him old Winston or ‘the old boy’ or something.” Boring.

Raccoon love

It took two brothers, Bill and Eric MacDonald, whose lives both revolve around the same street in Stratford, P.E.I., a whole week to realize that each of them had adopted orphaned baby raccoons one day this past summer. Bill, 69, found his outside BJ’s International Truck Centre, the family business, and took him in, buying kitten milk and a small bottle. He and his wife, Joan, named him Rambo because, Bill says, “he destroys everything,” including eating two keys off Joan’s laptop. One day, Eric, 72, who lives across the street, visited Bill’s office and spotted Rambo. “He thought it was his ’coon,” Bill says. Eric had adopted Rambo’s brother the same day and called him Rascal. But Bill and Eric must soon release the animals. Rambo already weighs 10 lb. “After they get a year old they get to be ferocious,” says Bill.

Wives on the bus

When world leaders and dignitaries gather, there is plenty of pomp to the affair: red carpets are rolled out, flags are raised, armoured cars convoy. Unless, perhaps, the politician is a woman. Last week, during a gathering of Pacific nation leaders, Julia Gillard, the prime minister of Australia, was kicked off the “leaders’ bus” and redirected to the bus for political wives. Gillard’s aide corrected them, and the PM took her hard-earned seat.

Rat castle

Toronto City Hall has long had problems with mice and squirrels—never, you might be surprised to learn, with rats. But last week, a big bruiser of a rodent found its way into budget chief Mike Del Grande’s office, and later bit a city worker sent to remove it. The interloper was just one episode in a whole panoply of goings-on at City Hall, where Mayor Rob Ford—he of “gravy train” fame—has been attempting to push through budget cuts. Quipped left-leaning Coun. Adam Vaughan of the animal: “It was looking for gravy, it didn’t find any so it ate a city worker.” The rat was put down. Even dead, he is likely more popular than the mayor, whose approval ratings have tanked.

Golf’s next great?

Teen golf prodigy Alexis Thompson became the youngest ever LPGA Tour winner last week, stunning the golfing world. The 16-year-old—who, at 12, became the youngest woman to qualify for the U.S. Open—called the win the “best feeling ever.”

Can RIM recover?

By Chris Sorensen and Jason Kirby - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 at 9:45 AM - 0 Comments

Martin Bureau/AFP/Getty Images

At the sprawling Future Shop store in downtown Vancouver, anyone who wants to check out Research In Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet must find it first. When the device debuted in April amid a glitzy ad campaign, it enjoyed front-and-centre billing at the store, but by last week only a single, neglected PlayBook sat collecting dust among the aging Bolds and Curves, two of RIM’s geriatric smartphone models. Just steps away, throngs of customers crowded around displays of shiny iPhones and iPads.

The PlayBook was supposed to catapult RIM back to its dominant perch in the mobile technology sector. After steadily losing ground in the smartphone wars to rivals like Apple and Google, the company’s co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis promised the device would redefine the burgeoning tablet business and set the stage for a new generation of BlackBerry devices. Instead, since the PlayBook’s launch, RIM has been plunged into the darkest period of its 27-year history. The past few months have been marred by an ugly string of profit warnings, product delays, recalls, and a host of nasty commentary from once boosterish analysts.

Patience is wearing thin. Consumers are increasingly gravitating toward RIM’s rivals and investors are selling their shares, which traded as low as $25 in recent months (compared to a high of nearly $150 three years ago). Perhaps most ominously, for the first time there are rumblings that some of RIM’s biggest customers—the wireless carriers that actually buy its devices and wireless email services and sell them to their subscribers—are losing faith.

Continue…

This week: Newsmakers

By Ken MacQueen, Nicholas Kohler, Jason Kirby and Nancy MacDonald - Monday, July 4, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Mike Hewitt/FIFA/Getty Images

Hollywood’s high rollers

His day job is playing such film roles as Spiderman and Nick Carraway, in the upcoming Great Gatsby adaptation. But incredible as it may seem, Tobey Maguire’s hobby—high-stakes poker—may be even more lucrative than the silver screen. Maguire’s winnings, which could amount to as much as $30 to $40 million over three years, came to light in a lawsuit filed against the 35-year-old actor by a group of investors attempting to recoup money lost to Brad Ruderman, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for operating a $5.2-million Ponzi scheme. Ruderman lost much of the money playing Texas Hold ’em, including over $300,000 to Maguire, in an exclusive poker ring that drew players like Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck and Matt Damon. Now, Ruderman’s investors want some of that cash. DiCaprio, Affleck and Damon aren’t being sued, though. “Matt never won,” a whistle-blower said.

One for the lads

As contingencies go, this one was a doozy. David Hart, a 23-year-old Royal Marine killed by a bomb blast in Afghanistan last year, earmarked $160,000 from his life insurance policy for an all-expenses paid trip to Las Vegas for his best friends and their girlfriends—32 people in all. “In a letter, David said he had had a great life and had no regrets about anything,” one friend told a reporter. “He said, ‘Go and have a good time and spend all this money.’ ” He left a second portion to his family, and the rest to charity. Hart, who died a day short of his 24th birthday, had always dreamed of a Vegas weekend. When his pals return to England they will continue training for a 275-km bike ride to raise money for the Royal Marines Charitable Trust.

Stick with a bike

The 911 call to police in Caseville, Mich., went something like this: “Believe it or not, I just passed about a five-, six-year-old flying down the road with a red Pontiac Sunbird.” Actually, Chief Jamie Learman discovered that the driver, who stood on the floorboard of his stepfather’s car to see over the steering wheel, was a pyjama-clad seven-year-old. He hit speeds of 80 kph during a 32-km drive across Huron County, north of Detroit. Police gingerly boxed him in, stopping him without incident. “He was crying, and just kept saying he wanted to go to his dad’s,” Learman said. “That was pretty much it: he just wanted to go to his dad’s.”

Quit that racquet!

There are tasks where a grunt or two are justified. Piano moving or childbirth come to mind. But tennis? It’s all a bit much, says Ian Richie, head of the All England Lawn and Tennis Club. “Whether you are watching it on TV or here, people don’t particularly like it,” he told Britain’s Telegraph, with precisely the sort of understatement he’d like to see on Wimbledon’s grass courts. Jimmy Connors was a pioneering grunter back in the 1970s. Women then took it up with great enthusiasm. Maria Sharapova was recorded at 105 decibels in 2009—as loud as a car horn from three feet. Portugal’s Michelle Larcher de Brito and Serena Williams have also employed the tactic as a weapon of mass distraction. Richie has made his concerns known, but certain fans find the sound effects appealing. Former Wimbledon Champ Michael Stich accuses the women of trying to “sell sex.”

#DMFail

Think a weakness for sexy social networking, à la Anthony Weiner, is a purely American failing? Turns out the language of <3 knows no borders. Xie Zhiqiang, a health bureau official in the Chinese city of Liyang, set up an account with Weibo, a Twitter-like service in China, early this year believing it was a private chat tool. “Please marry me if there is a second life, so that we can live in romance until we are 100 years old,” he wrote to a married woman on the site before the pair were able to follow through on a planned tryst. Xie learned of the mistake after a reporter called about the exchange. “How can you view our messages on Weibo? It is impossible, isn’t it?” He has since been suspended from his job.

Captain courageous

For more than a half-decade, she has been the face of Canadian women’s soccer—though perhaps never more so than now. Christine Sinclair wrote herself into the country’s sports lore for refusing to leave the field after her nose was broken in the opening game of the women’s World Cup at Berlin’s Olympiastadion. “You can’t play on,” Canada’s team doctor, Pietro Braina told her, trying to corral her onto the bench. But the Canadian captain turned, teary-eyed to Italian-born coach Carolina Morace who shrugged, palms up, and nodded to the field. Sinclair, of course, went on to score Canada’s lone goal, on a beautifully executed free kick in the dying minutes of the gutsy 2-1 loss—the first goal the two-time defending champion Germans have allowed since 2003. Sinclair, after having her nose resculpted by a German doctor, took to Twitter to opine on the new appendage: “amazing,” she wrote—joking, of course.

How to lose a billion dollars

It takes a lot to go from “the wealthiest divorcée in history” to bust in two decades—a lot of waste, that is. Patricia Kluge landed a $1-billion settlement when she split from media mogul John Kluge in 1990, only to blow the lot on parties for royalty, a 120-hectare estate in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains and a private winery. Kluge and her third husband, William Moses, have racked up $46 million in debt and filed for bankruptcy last week. Her antiques, and her personal jewellery collection have already been auctioned off, and the Kluge winery was sold at auction—to none other than Donald Trump, her old friend, for $6.2 million. But Kluge isn’t the only one exiting the billionaire club. Research in Motion’s co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis lost their status after a sharp drop in RIM’s share price cut their personal net worth to around $800 million each, down from $1.8 billion in March.

The Doc returns

After 12 years on the mound for the Toronto Blue Jays before he was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies, star pitcher Roy Halladay is set, this week, to make his long-awaited return to the mound at Rogers Centre, where he earned both a reputation and a nickname. The two-time Cy Young winner, Toronto’s first pick at the ’95 draft, was set to pitch against the Jays last year, but security concerns around the G20 summit forced the series to be shifted to Philadelphia instead. “Doc,” as he’s known around the league, was calm before the game: “I feel like it’s any other start.”

Tears of joy

“Alec! Now we can get married!” Steve Martin tweeted to his Oscar co-host, after New York legalized gay marriage in the state. “Ok,” Alec Baldwin responded, “but if you play that effing banjo after eleven o’clock…” Lady Gaga, meanwhile, was a bit more emotional: “I can’t stop crying,” said the staunch gay-rights activist. “We did it kids. The revolution is ours to fight.”

Life out of office

It was a good week for Gordon Campbell, who is off to London as Canada’s high commissioner to the U.K.; the plum posting comes with a chauffeur, a chef and an official residence in swank Mayfair. In London, the former B.C. premier, who always resisted the temptation to bash the feds, will further hone his diplomatic skills among royals and the global elite. Gilles Duceppe, an Ottawa basher par excellence, had a big week too, granting his first televised interview since the Bloc’s stunning collapse in the last federal election. Unless Quebecers choose sovereignty, they’ll be “eating gumbo” in 50 years, he told Radio-Canada. He went on to hint at a return to politics, likely at the helm of the PQ, which appears to be imploding, a mere two months after the Bloc. He may well return to helm a sovereignist party, but the better question may be whether anyone will still be interested in the idea.

No medal for the penguin?

Dozer, a three-year-old goldendoodle from Fulton, Md., now merits his own runner’s page on the Maryland Half Marathon website, after escaping his masters Sunday and running the race. He crossed the finish line at the 2:12:24 mark, limping and exhausted, and received a medal from organizers after they discovered he was running solo. Truth is, Dozer probably slipped into the run several miles into the event. Far more impressive is the emperor penguin who swam an astonishing 4,000 km from Antarctica to New Zealand. Happy Feet, as he was nicknamed, was operated on at the Wellington Zoo to remove the stick and pebbles he’d eaten on Peka Peka beach. A committee has been struck to decide whether he should be returned home.

Building ships, and political futures

After a week in Ottawa spent championing the province’s bid for part of an estimated $35 billion in federal shipbuilding contracts, B.C. premier Christy Clark returned home to announce a major investment in a new marine trade training facility on Vancouver Island, sweetening the pot. If successful, the contract, which could create thousands of new jobs and raise millions in spinoffs, could also help Clark in a possible fall election, which could come as early as September.

Returning the warm embrace

Michelle Obama was hailed as a queen in her first solo trip to Africa this week. There, the U.S. First Lady spoke passionately to students, danced with African youth, met with Nelson Mandela and even squeezed in a dinner with her gal-pal Oprah Winfrey, a queen in her own right.

In conversation: Gary Bettman

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 5 Comments

Photograph by Christopher Wahl

A franchise move, a new discipline czar, a controversial hit, and a see-saw Stanley Cup final; it’s been a busy couple of weeks for the National Hockey League’s commissioner. Prior to Game 5, he sat down to reflect on a season of wins and losses.

Q: Not presuming any outcomes, but what would a Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup after such an extended period of time mean for the game of hockey?

A: I think it would be tremendously exciting for fans of the Canucks. But in the final analysis, who wins the Cup isn’t as important as how good the final was—how exciting, how dramatic, how entertaining, how skilful. If you’re a fan of the Canucks—or Bruins—you’ll be excited beyond belief if they win. If you cheer for somebody else, you’ll be more interested in how good the hockey is.

Continue…

Think tank rankings prove to be controversial

By Peter Shawn Taylor - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 2 Comments

There are rankings for universities, safest cities, college sports teams, healthiest countries and nicest places to visit. Now, policy thinkers have their own rankings. And like almost all of the other lists, it’s proving to be controversial.

The University of Pennsylvania’s Think Tanks and Civil Society Program recently released a ranking of the leading policy organizations from among the 6,500 think tanks worldwide. While U.S. think tanks dominate the list—the Washington-based Brookings Institution tops the rankings—it has some significant Canadian representation. Ranked 25th in the world and first among Canadian think tanks is the free-market-oriented Fraser Institute. A notable showing was also earned by the Centre for International Governance Innovation, based in Waterloo, Ont., and backed by Research in Motion’s Jim Balsillie, which came 32nd on a separate list that excluded U.S. think tanks.

But there are some equally significant Canadian omissions. Toronto’s C.D. Howe Institute is generally recognized as the preferred outlet for research by Canada’s top academics and boasts an impressive record, particularly in monetary policy, taxation and free trade. And yet, it isn’t anywhere on the lists. “We weren’t aware of this survey,” says William Robson, C.D. Howe’s president and CEO. “But I think we can make a pretty good case for being influential.” Also missing is the Conference Board of Canada, the country’s largest think tank, and the widely cited, left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. James McGann, director of the ranking project, admits that the list—which is determined by a panel of experts who sift through nominations—is still a work in progress, and is planning to tweak it next year in ways that could result in greater Canadian representation.

Canada: A tech leper no longer?

By Chris Sorensen - Thursday, April 1, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 4 Comments

Photograph by Mike Cassese/ Reuters

There has been plenty of hand-wringing about the need for Canada to develop a high-tech economy, one that encourages entrepreneurs to follow in the footsteps of Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, who built BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion into a global success story. But the effort has been long on talk and short on action. Until now. The Conservative government has finally taken a hatchet to some of the red tape that prevents budding young companies from accessing sufficient U.S. venture capital, the lifeblood of start-ups.

Previously, U.S. venture capital firms were forced to complete untold hours of tedious paperwork every time they wanted to cash out of a Canadian company and realize any profits. Section 116 of the tax code withheld 25 per cent of the returns from the sale of any company backed by American venture capital funds until each investor—which could number in the thousands—proved they were a foreign citizen. The process, which isn’t applied to Canadian venture capital firms investing in the U.S., routinely held up the sale process by several months, or even years, driving away potential investors.

Michael Arrington, a prominent American technology blogger, commended Ottawa’s move by suggesting Canada has finally become “less of a leper colony for tech entrepreneurs.” He wasn’t kidding. Deal activity in the venture capital market last year fell to its lowest level since the mid-1990s, according to the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association. Roughly $1 billion was invested across the county in 2009, down nearly 27 per cent from a year earlier. At the same time, the average Canadian firm with venture capital backing received about $3.1 million last year, less than 40 per cent of the dollars poured into their American counterparts. So while the federal government has taken an important step toward closing the gap, it will be some time before we can truly consider Canada a Silicon Valley of the North.

Definition challenge: The voting

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, December 21, 2009 at 6:01 AM - 25 Comments

UPDATE: SeanStok wins! Take an e-bow, Sean. Thanks to all for your definitions and your votes: the Monday caption challenge resumes in the new year.

•

Using only my instincts (and the bones of 14 chickens), I’ve selected three finalists for the 2009 Definition Challenge. Do what you will with them. Winner gets a $50 Amazon.ca gift certificate and, in the spirit of the holidays, a purple nurple*.

* Gift certificate optional.

Meanwhile, the caption challenge and mailbag are taking a holiday hiatus. The merriest of the season to you all. I’ll be the guy at the Continue…

The Interview: Gary Bettman

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 12:23 PM - 52 Comments

In 16 years as NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman has shaped pro hockey in numerous ways—U.S. expansion, two lockouts, rule changes, the salary cap, the participation of NHL players in the Olympics. The past year, however, counts among the most troubled of his tenure. The league’s tug-of-war with billionaire Jim Balsillie for control of the Phoenix Coyotes put Bettman at odds with many fans, highlighting the combative side of the commissioner’s personality. Earlier this week, he discussed the fallout of Phoenix, fan antipathy toward him, and other hockey-related matters with the Maclean’s editorial board.

Q: It’s been a tumultuous couple of years for you, at least publicly. Do you still enjoy your job?

A: I love the job. I’m passionate about the game, and the people around the game, the way we as a sport connect with our fans. Every job has challenges, things that make the job interesting. I’m not exactly sure, by the way, that I buy into your characterization of tumultuous. That seems to be a little dramatic, perhaps media-centric, as opposed to the reality. But every business has day-to-day challenges, and that’s part of what gets those of us who work going every day.

Q: We want to give you a chance to respond to the broad perception here in Canada that you feel the future of the game lies in the United States—and that the real reason the NHL was in court this summer was to keep Canada from getting more teams.

A: I’ve got to ask you a question about your question. Where does that perception come from? What is it based on? Give me any factual basis and I’ll answer the question. Continue…

Why Balsillie went ballistic

By Charlie Gillis and Michael Friscolanti - Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 3:15 PM - 33 Comments

Craig Leipold is not the sort of man who shoots off his mouth. Even before he joined the cloistered ranks of the National Hockey League as owner of the Nashville Predators, the sandy-haired entrepreneur from Racine, Wisc., had carved a reputation for discretion—a virtue no doubt learned from his in-laws. Leipold’s wife happens to be Helen Johnson of S.C. Johnson & Company fame, and while her husband long ago proved his business bona fides, Leipold’s social station speaks for itself. You don’t gain entry into one of America’s most venerable families by waging unseemly personal battles.

But when the subject of Jim Balsillie comes up, as it did during a deposition hearing last month, Leipold’s customary reserve flies out the window. Now the owner of the Minnesota Wild, Leipold was testifying as part of the high-profile bankruptcy proceedings of the Phoenix Coyotes, recalling the six months of fractured negotiations in 2007 when he’d tried to sell the Predators to Balsillie. For two years, Leipold had kept his feelings about the quixotic Canadian billionaire largely to himself. Now, from his lawyer’s Main Street offices in Racine, he was about to pound a rhetorical stake through Balsillie’s reputation. Continue…

Is the iPhone killing RIM?

By Colin Campbell - Friday, August 14, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 25 Comments

Last month, a posting appeared on the popular Business Insider blog that no doubt filled some Research In Motion executives with a sense of dread. Under the heading “How I Ended My Affair With BlackBerry And Eloped With The iPhone,” former tech analyst Henry Blodget described how he somewhat reluctantly went out and bought Apple’s latest “it” phone, the new iPhone 3G S, after 12 years of loyal BlackBerry service. Business users have long been skeptical of the sleek iPhone and its touchscreen display, which can make emailing and typing a chore, but Blodget wasn’t disappointed with his switch. “It’s nice here in Apple world,” he concluded.

Research in Motion (RIM) is still a smartphone juggernaut, but the defection of influential business leaders like Blodget sends a chilling signal to the Waterloo, Ont.-based company. More than half of its 28.5 million subscribers are business users, and while they haven’t been dropping their BlackBerries en masse, momentum is quickly building behind the iPhone. While RIM reported a decline in the number of new subscribers in its latest quarterly results, Apple saw iPhone sales jump sevenfold. And when the new iPhone 3G S launched this summer, U.S. buyers snapped up one million of them in just three days. If the trend continues, and iPhone sales continue to rocket up, it’s easy to see who will come out on top. Analysts say that Apple’s rise out of nowhere to become a legitimate rival to the BlackBerry is something that RIM is now going to extraordinary lengths to guard against. Continue…

Newsmakers: Remodelling

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, August 6, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

The change begins
The promise of “change” propelled Barack Obama into the White House, and if nothing else, the new U.S. President has managed to change one thing: the location of the couch. On Feb. 2, just before an Oval Office meeting about the economic recovery plan, Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas helped Obama slide a sofa to another part of the room. A fresh perspective never hurts.

Royal mess
Maybe Obama has good reason not to trust the hired help. At Buckingham Palace, a hapless footman ruined an expensive new carpet when he accidentally spilled a trolley of tea and coffee. The clumsy servant was on duty in the Picture Gallery, a 50-m-long room that—to the chagrin of the royals—had been re-carpeted just two days earlier. Continue…

Can't catch Nortel in a bottle

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 2:01 PM - 34 Comments

It’s at times like this, with the future of Nortel’s coveted wireless technology up for grabs and billions of dollars at stake, that I like to recall the wise counsel of old John C. Lobb. He was a jowly fellow who became the president of Northern Electric, Nortel’s predecessor, in 1971. He picked that dusty old company up by the scruff of its neck and shook it wide awake. Profits tripled in his first year and doubled again in his second. He used to ask employees what the company made. They’d tell him it made telephone switching equipment. He’d bellow, “We don’t make switching, God damn it! We make money.”

I love those great Canadian success stories. John Lobb, incidentally, was a lawyer from Minneapolis who ran Crucible Steel of Pittsburgh before he moved north, and who died in Pennsylvania.

All of which teaches us two lessons that may be appropriate to the current fuss over ownership of Nortel assets. Continue…

Jim Balsillie donates $50 million to non-hockey-based excellence

By Paul Wells - Monday, May 25, 2009 at 2:11 PM - 13 Comments

In Waterloo, where all the billionaires are philanthropists, Jim Balsillie today donated $50 million to match donations from the federal and Ontario governments to create the Balsillie Centre of Excellence. This will work with his Centre on International Governance Innovation and Canadian International Council to ensure the Kitchener-Waterloo region remains a world leader in creating vaguely exciting names for think tanks. The news release announcing the Centre contains few details, although we can report the new thing will engage in “networking, capacity-building and knowledge sharing” and that it will look like this:

There are but two things we can all agree on

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 8, 2009 at 12:27 PM - 9 Comments

The following statement from Liberal whip Rodger Cuzner was greeted with a standing ovation from both Liberals and Conservatives yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, the air around the city of Hamilton is charged with excitement today in anticipation of the return of the great one. Relax, my Conservative friends, I do not mean Sheila Copps, rather the great one himself, Wayne Gretzky. In a move that is driven by his great passion for hockey and his deep belief in the potential of southern Ontario, Jim Balsillie is once again trying to bring the NHL to its senses and a team to the region. Now, being a lifelong Toronto Maple Leafs fan, I really understand the jokes that are coming, such as, if southern Ontario gets an NHL team, then Toronto will want one, too. I think the potential of regional rivalries in a battle of Ontario with a third combatant is great stuff. I appreciate the league’s valiant attempt to grow a fan base in the Arizona desert, but the experiment has been scorched. It is time the NHL recognized the huge potential that exists in southern Ontario and the opportunity to bring into its fold one of this country’s most progressive and successful entrepreneurs in Jim Balsillie. I really hope that this transaction is allowed to go forward.

The other thing we can all agree on? That our Olympic athletes should be wrapped at all times in seal skin.

RIM penalty warns of a tougher OSC

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

When executives at Research in Motion agreed to pay $77 million earlier this month to settle a stock option scandal dating back to 2007, it was a chance for the maker of the BlackBerry device to put the episode behind it.

But for officials at the Ontario Securities Commission who investigated and negotiated the settlement, the hefty penalty was meant to send a lasting warning to any other companies playing fast and loose with securities laws. “No matter who you are, if you conduct yourself in this way and breach Ontario securities law, you’re going to get sanctioned,” says Sasha Angus, a litigator with the OSC. “Depending on what you’ve done, it’s going to be a bigger penalty.”

Continue…

Would a $100-million fine be too much?

By Jason Kirby - Wednesday, February 4, 2009 at 8:40 AM - 0 Comments

$100 million is a lot of money. Even to Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, the billionaire wonder duo who created the BlackBerry wireless device. Yet that’s the pound of flesh Ontario’s security regulator reportedly hopes to extract for Research in Motion’s involvement in a stock option backdating scandal. If the penalty seems arbitrary, though, that’s because it is.

A recap: in 2006 a special committee of RIM’s directors found the company improperly dated more than 3,000 options starting in the mid-1990s. Following the investigation, the company restated its earnings to include a $250-million after-tax expense, and the two executives repaid improper gains amounting to $1.6 million, plus legal costs.
Continue…

Should Toronto have two NHL teams?

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 12:22 PM - 71 Comments

If the rest of Canada doesn’t already hate Toronto for thinking it’s the centre of the universe, this story ought to do it. According to the Globe and Mail, NHL governors are talking informally about the possibility of placing a second hockey team in Toronto alongside the Maple Leafs. One source in the article reported that prospective owner Jim “I’ll eat my own pants to get a team” Balsillie might be rewarded with the new franchise after helping the Nashville Predators deal with their financial woes. But the big question is: Should Toronto have two NHL teams? As for a name, my choice is the Toronto 67′s. It will be a nice reminder that it’s been 41 years since the Leafs won Lord Stanley’s Cup.

NHL: we'll take the suspected fraudster, thanks

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, June 13, 2008 at 3:41 PM - 0 Comments

Does the NHL exercise anything resembling due diligence when choosing those it welcomes into its rarified club of owners?

The latest laugher: William Del Biaggio III (Roman numerals his), is not only in bankruptcy protection, but under FBI investigation for possible misdealings related to the purchase of the Predators. Here’s a complicated read from CP on the latest troubles plaguing he man known as “Boots” (precious nickname his). Reading between the lines, one can’t help thinking that an FBI investigation makes Del Biaggio’s release from Chapter 11 about as likely as Florida winning the Cup. Ergo, whoever holds the debt he took on to buy the Preds and secure their arena lease is likely to get pennies on the dollar. Cost of widespread snickering at the NHL’s expense? Priceless.

Recall, folks, that “Boots” got in the door only after Gary Bettman and the league blocked BlackBerry gazillionaire Jim Balsillie from buying the Nashville Tootoos on account of their priority was to keep the club in Tennessee. They feared that Balsillie might do something stupid like move the club to a market where it would succeed.

Much more promising was “Boots’s” first ingenious plan to move the Preds to Kansas City, filling a presumably ravenous appetite for hockey in northwest Missour-ah. Now “Boots” owes something in the range of $57 million that he is evidently unable to pay. Balsillie, meanwhile, is worth a little under $5 billion, according to very recent reports.

I know what you’re thinking: Jim B’s in perfect shape to swoop in now, get a share of the Preds and prepare them to move. Don’t bet on it. Bettman et al decided long ago Balsillie’s not a worthy pledge to their fraternity.

They are, however, looking for Peter Pocklington’s number …