Business

Canada is doing its utmost to promote itself internationally as an innovation leader with its initiatives to attract investment and talent.

TORONTO—TD Bank is joining a rival bank in offering a highly discounted variable mortgage rate as competition among Canada’s biggest lenders heats up. The Toronto-based bank said on May 15 that it is lowering its five-year variable closed rate to 2.45 percent, or 1.15 percent lower than its TD Mortgage Prime rate, until May 31. […]

NEW YORK/TOKYO—Xerox Corp has scrapped a planned $6.1 billion deal with Fujifilm Holdings Corp in a settlement with activist investors Carl Icahn and Darwin Deason that also hands control of the U.S. photocopier giant to new management. The victory for the billionaire investors puts the Japanese company further on the back foot in any new […]

TAIPEI—Taiwan’s Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics maker and supplier to Apple , posted a 14.5 percent fall in first-quarter net profit on Monday, lagging estimates despite a strong quarter for the U.S. iPhone maker. Net profit for the first three months of 2018 for the company known formally as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co […]

LOS ANGELES—Billionaire businessman Elon Musk is promising the public “free rides” in the next few months through the first high-speed passenger tunnel drilled beneath Los Angeles by his aptly named underground transit venture, the Boring Company. The question is whether the tunnel as advertised by Musk on social media will live up to the sensation […]

The Electronic Money Supervisory Commission has recently announced that it will implement the ICO certification system for the first time in Europe in May, getting so much attention from the industry. So far in the cryptocurrency market, all the scams in the form of ICO or ICOs done by a company that has not been […]

Last year, cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and other crypto products based on ethereum burst onto the financial scene for good with spectacular price increases. In 2018, there have been a mini-crash and some sideways movement. Will this volatility keep cryptocurrencies from playing a larger and possibly significant role for payments and investment in the future? Cryptocurrencies have […]

NEW YORK—The dollar rose to fresh 2018 highs on May 7 while oil prices surged to their highest since late 2014, driven by declining Venezuelan crude production and worries the United States could re-impose sanctions on Iran. The crude surge lifted energy stocks in Europe and on Wall Street, with European shares supported by strong […]

LONDON—BT will cut 13,000 managerial and back-office jobs and move to a smaller London base in the latest attempt by the boss of Britain’s biggest telecoms group to rebuild from an accounting scandal and multiple pressures on its business. Chief Executive Gavin Patterson said radical action was “absolutely critical” to ensure BT could deliver the […]

The number of companies listed on the stock exchange has dropped significantly in the last two decades. Although the benefits of going public are significant, it has over time become an unattractive means of raising capital for businesses. An initial public offering (IPO) is the process by which a private company can go public by […]

Jean-Jacques Etcheberrigaray, the general manager of the Fairmont Le Manoir Richelieu hotel, was visiting relatives in the south of France in his native Basque region about a year ago when he received a call from the federal government. He didn’t know it at the time, but federal employees had made three incognito visits to the […]

SAN FRANCISCO—Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday ordered one of the biggest management shakeups in the history of the social network, giving more responsibility to his chief product officer and launching a blockchain division. The shakeup appeared to consolidate power at the sprawling internet company, although it included no firings or outside hires […]

Walmart Inc’s online grocery delivery partnerships with ride-hailing services Uber and Lyft have ended, according to two sources, a potential setback for the retailer’s ambitions to challenge Amazon.com Inc head-on with speedy delivery of groceries to people’s homes. The end of the Walmart partnerships, which has not been previously reported and was confirmed by Walmart […]

Alphabet Inc’s Google has sent online publishers an update to its ad-serving platform, which allows them to select advertising tech vendors that comply with new European data privacy laws, news website Axios reported on Tuesday. Google is the top vendor of the software that many newspapers and digital media firms use to sell ads on […]

By Jonathan Stempel and Brendan Pierson NEW YORK—Rapper Jay-Z has been ordered to appear at a hearing in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused him of twice defying subpoenas calling him to testify in an investigation of the sale of his Rocawear clothing line. In a court filing […]

It is a great time to be a tech entrepreneur in Canada, says Erin Bury, startup aficionado and managing director of creative communications agency Eighty-Eight in Toronto.

SEOUL/SINGAPORE—Investors in global chipmakers have had a rocky ride in the last few months on worries about a slowing smartphone market, but a clamour for more video content from consumers is underpinning buoyant sales for memory-chip makers. Indeed, the earnings reports of various chipmakers and smartphone companies in the past month tell a more interesting […]

Uber Technologies Inc  on Monday said it has retained a former top U.S. transportation official to advise it on safety after a fatal self-driving crash in March, but it declined to comment on a technology website’s report that a software flaw was responsible for the accident. The Information reported on Monday that Uber has determined […]

OMAHA, NE—Warren Buffett lost money but had a pretty good quarter. Berkshire Hathaway Inc on Saturday reported an unusual quarterly net loss, the result of an accounting change that Buffett had warned would produce “wild” but in his view meaningless swings in results. But Berkshire also ended a long stretch of disappointing operating performance, posting […]

NEW YORK—U.S. interest rate futures rose modestly on Friday, as traders still expect the Federal Reserve to raise key borrowing costs at its June 12-13 policy meeting in the wake of weaker-than-forecast growth in domestic payrolls and wages in April. Nonfarm payrolls increased by 164,000 last month, below the 192,000 gain forecast by analysts in […]