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| Liberal Party fundraising shifts into high gear
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, September 24, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com Tonight Tom Bitove is set to host a fundraiser for Michael Ignatieff's Liberals deep in the kingdom of Bay Street at Scotiabank Plaza.Mr. Bitove is a scion of the Bitove restaurant family and is a business partner of Wayne Gretzky, as well as executive chairman of moving van company AMJ Campbell.
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| A missing museum chief and an unhappy union
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, September 23, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comWell, it's one way to deal with a labour dispute. When many of the 420 striking workers at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the Canadian War Museum barraged museum CEO Victor Rabinovitch with e-mails in early September requesting that he negotiate a fair contract with them, they received an unusual e-mail back: an automated ''out of office'' message because the top executive was away from the office until Sept. 22.
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| Food aroma may be the lure for Calgary hot property
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, September 10, 2009
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A modest mid-rise office building on 17th Ave. in southwest Calgary is suddenly drawing some of the city's noteworthy financial players.Located in an area undergoing a renaissance, the brown brick edifice is headquarters to investment firm Shaunessy Investment Counsel and to developer Guy Turcotte's Stone Creek Resorts. The former is onetime Bay Streeter Terry Shaunessy's firm; the latter is building a $1.5-billion resort in Canmore, Alta., called Silvertip.
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| A PETA pitch with wings?
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, September 09, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comAnimal protection activists at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are ready to buy ad space on Air Canada aircraft. The group is suggesting a photo of a seal be painted on airplane fins, along with a punchy slogan on the fuselage.
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| The bank customer's new BFF
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, September 03, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com Let's see if Douglas Melville will have more success with Royal Bank of Canada than his predecessor did. Canada's new banking ombudsman was appointed this week, and in his first days he's talking a tad tough. His job is to push changes on how complaints from customers of banks and investment firms are handled by institutions.
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| Is oil man buyer of Calgary manor? He's playing coy
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, September 02, 2009
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Who bought a sumptuous Calgary mansion from former star Flames goalie Mike Vernon for a record price last month? At $10.3-million, it was the highest sale price ever in the city (eclipsing a precrash record of $7.5-million) and the house sold in less than four months.
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| A deserving edifice for Bill Davis
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PATRICIA BEST
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Tuesday, September 01, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com Early last month, a stealth e-mail was sent around to friends and admirers of former Ontario premier Bill Davis, alerting them to a plan to have a building at the University of Toronto's Mississauga campus renamed in his honour - along with a $5-million capital campaign to build a new student services plaza. The project has not yet been publicly announced by the university. For the 80-year-old Mr. Davis, who was born and raised in nearby Brampton and has never let anyone forget that, it is a particularly fitting honour. While provincial education minister in the 1960s and premier in the 1970s and 80s, he had a huge impact on Ontario's school curriculum, the creation of community colleges and the expansion of universities. The long-reigning ''red Tory'' presided over the creation of Erindale College - renamed U of T Mississauga - in 1967.
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| Fame becomes him
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, August 27, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com The ubiquitous, uber-energetic W. Brett Wilson may have retired last December as chairman from the company he co-founded, Calgary-based FirstEnergy Capital Corp., but like a hummingbird on speed, he rarely stops moving. He is loving his new life of public appearances, TV shows and dates with a celebrity songstress.
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| O'Leary tails Lang to CBC to set her right
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comBNN star anchor Kevin O'Leary inked a deal yesterday to take his high-octane act to CBC, we have learned. ''I signed one hour ago,'' he told us when we tracked him down. He joins former co-anchor Amanda Lang - with whom he hosted the popular show SqueezePlay for the business TV channel - who departed for the CBC earlier this summer.
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| Flaherty's bank crew a bit thin in China
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, August 12, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comFinance Minister Jim Flaherty's entourage on his five-day trade mission in China this week includes senior execs from the big banks. But not the most senior: All of the banks' CEOs took a pass. Apparently, some had been to the country recently, all knew they'd be swamped preparing their upcoming quarterly financial statements and a couple of the banks don't consider China to be a major priority.
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| CIBC memo takes the cake
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, August 06, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comAt the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce it seems you cannot have your cake and decorate it any old way you like. The bank has standards - ''Cake Standards,'' as outlined last May in a memo about brand standards.
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| Dad gets some kudos too: Bill Gates Sr. honoured
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comBill Gates's father, William H. Gates Sr., is set to receive the highest honour awarded by the American Bar Association at its annual meeting in Chicago a month from now. The 83-year-old is winning the ABA Medal, not only for his lengthy career in law, but also for his post-retirement activities as a philanthropist and author. Not mentioned by the ABA is perhaps the senior Mr. Gates's greatest gift to the legal profession - son Bill, who, as the driving force of Microsoft, has indirectly provided more work for antitrust practitioners than mega-American corporations such as IBM, ATandT, Kodak and Standard Oil.
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| Captains of finance as captive audience
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PATRICIA BEST
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comA high-profile crowd turned out bright and early one morning last week to hear Bank of Nova Scotia chief executive officer Rick Waugh and Bank of New York Mellon CEO Bob Kelly take questions from former deputy prime minister John Manley, as well as audience members, on the financial crisis.
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| Rosedale keeping its clothes on this time around
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, June 25, 2009
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Tonight in the tranquil Toronto enclave of Rosedale, a party without borders is set to unfold.Now in its fifth year, and with all proceeds going to Serve!, an intensive program for at-risk, inner-city youth aged 13 to 24, the event has become known for the great entertainment served up in the fenceless backyards of two Rosedale homes.
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| Budman keepin' it real on Fox
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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Canada got a big shout-out on Fox Business TV network on Monday when Roots co-founder Michael Budman was featured in a live interview. Mr. Budman told the American audience that his 180 stores are doing just fine during the recession and he emphasized his company's leather products, including a new footwear line, are made in a factory in Toronto - not offshore. ''And that's a good thing in this environment,'' he said. How did you resist, asked the Fox interviewers. ''A few years ago we got talked into going offshore by senior management, which is no longer with us. ... When you let products get made offshore, you lose the realness.''
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| An 'urgent' call from China
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PATRICIA BEST
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Tuesday, June 23, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com The Canada China Business Council put out an urgent request last week to Canadian business leaders to show up in force for a luncheon today in Ottawa for visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi. The two-day visit is described as ''sudden'' - it was announced in China last Friday that Mr. Yang would make the stop on his way to a UN conference on the global economic crisis in New York later this week.
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| Flaherty a big fan of a new think tank
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comTomorrow night, the country's Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty, will host a private dinner at the Albany Club in Toronto to raise support for a new, non-partisan, private sector think tank. Called the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and designed to be national in scope but based in Ottawa, it is the creation of Brian Lee Crowley, currently president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax.
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| Duchesne's ready to ride
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, June 11, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comRupert Duchesne, CEO of Aeroplan, may be in the business of frequent-flier points but he excels at spoked-wheel transport. In this weekend's Ride to Conquer Cancer, a 200-kilometre, two-day bike ride from Toronto to Niagara Falls, Mr. Duchesne will be part of an elite team of more than 50 riders led by Lawrence Zimmering, founder of Resolve Corp., and Olympic medalist Steve Bauer.
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| Hearn's lump sum was quite an imperial payout
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PATRICIA BEST
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Tuesday, June 09, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com It seems former Imperial Oil chief executive officer Tim Hearn is doing okay in retirement. The company's proxy circular, which was filed three months ago, has an interesting morsel buried in a footnote on page 31. It seems Mr. Hearn, who left at the end of March, 2008, took a lump-sum pension payout from the company, thus it does not appear on the document's main compensation chart. Imperial Oil executives can choose to receive their pension payments as a monthly annuity or as a lump sum. But because Mr. Hearn chose to take a lump sum, Imperial Oil cut a cheque for $23.586-million. Mr. Hearn also holds 618,200 share units, which are eligible for exercise as late as 2011, depending on the date they were granted. At year-end, Mr. Hearn's were worth $25.34-million.
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| Mansion on the move
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, June 04, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.comToronto homeowners take heart. Word comes to us from the rarefied region of the Bridle Path that prestige mansions are selling again. Case in point: Russian-born billionaire Alex Shnaider's Old Colony Road grand residence reportedly just sold for $8.6-million. We hear that the globe-trotting Mr. Shnaider has built a new home elsewhere in the Bridle Path for himself and his family, so he's not leaving town. Mr. Shnaider, of course, is chairman of Talon International (he also has steel, sports and shipping interests), the company behind the $500-million, 57-floor Trump International Hotel and Tower being built in the downtown financial district.
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| A higher plane for friendship
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PATRICIA BEST
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Wednesday, June 03, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com Vancouver-based mining mogul Frank Giustra has an air ride with gold-plated fixtures in the shower-equipped bathroom, leather upholstered reclining seats, flat-panel TVs and original art on the walls. The name of Mr. Giustra's MD-87 jet? ''Giustra Air,'' reads the logo on the blankets. These details come by way of last Sunday's article in The New York Times Magazine, by Peter Baker, about the ''mellowing'' of former U.S. president Bill Clinton.
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| St. Laurent speech book in the works
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PATRICIA BEST
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
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pbest@globeandmail.com Arthur Milnes, a fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., is canvassing his business, political and academic contacts to help finance publication of a collection of speeches by Louis St. Laurent, who became Liberal prime minister in November, 1948, and led the country until 1957.
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