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| Fuld disclosure: What the Lehman boss meant to say
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, September 04, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comThere is probably no person in world who is more closely identified with the financial crisis, and no one who was so tarnished by it. Before the turmoil of 2008, Richard S. Fuld was a capitalist hero and a top Wall Street boss; after it, he was a household name - for all the wrong reasons.
FULL STORY 
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| A Chinese bid for Potash demands more than rubber stamp
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, August 28, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comIn the Great Canadian Fertilizer Fight, the phony war phase has begun. We are now at the equivalent of the Maginot line in late 1939, with armies (of bankers, in this instance) secretly plotting their lines of attack and the rest of us just waiting for the real hostilities to begin.
FULL STORY
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| Manulife, the markets and the hottest seat on Bay St.
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DEREK DECLOET
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Saturday, August 07, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comOur task here today is to explain, in layman's terms, the tribulations of one Donald A. Guloien.Outside of Bay Street, he remains largely unknown, even though he occupies one of the most important posts in Canadian business. There's a reason for that anonymity. The Guloien narrative isn't one of great entrepreneurial drive (Jimmy Pattison) or of a radical mid-career shift (TD's Ed Clark) or inventing a world-changing device (the boys from RIM). It's about a man who graduated from the University of Toronto, took a low-level job at an insurance company and 28 years later found himself running the place, and they don't write movie scripts about guys like that.
FULL STORY
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| Why China's economy isn't always what it seems
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, July 31, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comMaybe it's just what happens when a country gets used to winning. Maybe, having conquered everything from the gold medal rankings at the Summer Olympics to the world's manufacturing business, being second doesn't mean anything to China any more.
FULL STORY
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| Mike Harris blinks, and Frank Stronach's sweet deal is sealed
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DEREK DECLOET
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Saturday, July 10, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comAs the deficit-fighting Premier of Ontario, Mike Harris stared down furious teachers and civil servants on the picket line. He advised welfare recipients to ''try and work a few hours a week'' if they wanted to eat better. He loudly accused Paul Martin of ''stealing'' billions from the province's taxpayers. He needed to be tough as
FULL STORY
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| Moral authority helps Canada score major win on bank tax
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Monday, June 28, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comWhen Barack Obama wants to improve his political fortunes, he scolds the ''fat cats'' of Wall Street, with their ''perverse incentives'' to earn ''obscene'' bonuses. When Stephen Harper wants to improve his, he looks into television cameras and boasts, as he did Sunday morning, that Canada is ''home to the most solid financial sector in the world.''
FULL STORY
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| Mop the red ink, G20 - but don't forget the banks
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, June 26, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comSummit town? Ghost town is more like it.The stock market opened for business at 9:30 on Friday morning, as it always does, but in Toronto's financial district there was nary a sign of a banker or trader. The courtyard fountain of Commerce Court, where employees of CIBC can normally be found venting or enjoying a cigarette break, was left to the pigeons. They even turned off the illuminated sign that carries the day's market action at the corner of King and Bay Streets, for what would have been the point? The only people to watch it would have been bored out-of-town cops.
FULL STORY
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| In B.C.'s HST debate, passion trumps good sense
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, June 19, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comToday we come not to bury Gordon Campbell, but to praise him. Somebody has to.Mr. Campbell has been British Columbia's Premier for the past nine years. That in itself is an achievement, given the track record of those who've held the office. There was Glen Clark (resigned amid a criminal investigation, 1999), and before him Mike Harcourt (resigned amid a criminal investigation that involved his party, 1996), and before him Bill Vander Zalm (resigned because of a conflict-of-interest probe that led to criminal charges, 1991).Yet Mr. Campbell is now treated as the biggest scoundrel of them all.
FULL STORY
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| The greatest show on Earth tests our focus and stealth viewing skills
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, June 12, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comIt's called the World Cup. It ought to be called the World's Distraction.Through the magic of streaming Internet video (thank you, Al Gore), it's now possible for millions of fanatics, casual observers of the sport, and professional procrastinators to watch soccer at work, while not appearing to watch soccer at work. Not that any of us would actually do that, since we've all been listening to the admonitions of Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to become more productive.
FULL STORY
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| Thank God for Frank. What would we do without him?
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DEREK DECLOET
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Saturday, June 05, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comEvery night at the dinner table, every business journalist in this country ought to give a toast to the continued good health of Frank Stronach, for what would corporate Canada look like without him?
FULL STORY
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| Emotion isn't something to fear, but to exploit
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, May 22, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comIn Bangkok this week, anti-government protesters set the stock exchange on fire. In financial centres around the world, investors wished they had done the same.There is something odd about the way in which a market slide - and that's what this month has brought, a slide, not a panic - sets off a frenetic search for causes. Many times, these explanations make no sense, or are half-baked guesses, or are (at best) incomplete. Take Thursday's drop, which sent the U.S. markets tumbling nearly 4 per cent and the TSX down more than 2. It was purportedly set off by ''nagging worries that Europe's debt crisis could spread,'' said The New York Times, or by ''fears of a disorderly crackdown on banks and financial markets,'' according to the Financial Times.
FULL STORY
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| Debt raters too easy on the U.K.'s 'lazy money'
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, May 15, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comDear friends and readers, have we got an investment opportunity for you.We have this good friend, you see, a salt-of-the-Earth guy. Actually, you could say he's more like a distant relative. We've been through a lot together, and while his greatest glories are probably in the past ... did we mention that he's a great guy?
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| Foreign investors are not the answer
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DEREK DECLOET
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Saturday, May 08, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com''We are in a position to achieve an economic miracle in our region.'' - George Alogoskoufis, Finance Minister of Greece, February, 2006.Yes, it's a miracle all right. Somehow, Greece, a nation of tax evaders, kleptomaniac civil servants and soccer fanatics, whose financial muscle is dwarfed by that of Belgium - Belgium, for crying out loud - has sent the world's investors into fits of anxiety. Somehow, a country whose role in the global economy is of such insignificance that the place could have sunk into the Aegean Sea and no economist would have noticed, is now being noticed.
FULL STORY
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| GM's fresh new face and the ugly truth
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, April 24, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comGeneral Motors chairman Ed Whitacre fired the CEO and, in the exhaustive search for a replacement, stumbled upon the perfect candidate: himself. Seeking to break GM's bailout-tainted image, the new boss then set out to find a new public spokesman for the company, went as far as the bathroom and said, Well, who's that handsome man in the mirror?
FULL STORY
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| SEC's move sabotages a Wall St. image makeover
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, April 17, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com For Goldman Sachs Group Inc., a nightmare has begun.It's going to be ugly, and it's probably going to be costly, and the rotten-egg stench of it all is going to linger over the world's most powerful investment bank for some time. Why? Because the facts supporting the securities fraud allegations against Goldman align perfectly with what has long been the singular criticism of the firm: that it rarely lets the interests of its customers get in the way of making a dollar for itself.
FULL STORY
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| So much contrition, so few solutions
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, April 10, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comA famous American, his name sullied by accusations of stupid and reckless behaviour, emerged from a long absence this week. Nothing he says now can ever restore his reputation to its pre-scandal lustre, nor bring back the millions of dollars in future earnings he has lost. But it is never too late to try to make amends, to look into the camera and bare your soul, or at least your regrets, to the world.
FULL STORY
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| Real estate agents need to tone down the speeches
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, March 27, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com In a west Toronto neighbourhood that once had a healthy contingent of blue-collar immigrants, there is a house that the neighbours talk about - not for its beauty, but for its former ugliness and disrepair. Listed for sale about a year ago, the owner told the real estate agent not to bother showing the place to buyers.
FULL STORY
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| 6 questions / Michael Lewis
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Derek DeCloet
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Friday, March 26, 2010
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62Weeks on The New York Times bestseller list******What inspired this book?I really did think after Liar's Poker that it was highly unlikely that I would ever go back to Wall Street for another book. I guess I didn't really believe the material would be so rich again. Then, oh, two, two and a half years ago...I started to get the sense that, oh my God, these places that were sort of the beating heart of capitalism somehow became the dumb money.
FULL STORY
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| Tales of greed and epic financial failures
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, March 20, 2010
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The two men sat in a New York City restaurant: the author and the banker he had antagonized two decades earlier.''I think we can agree about this,'' John Gutfreund, long ago the prince of Wall Street, told his lunch companion, Michael Lewis. ''Your fucking book destroyed my career and it made yours.''
FULL STORY
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| Truth, lies and Alberta's royalty backtrack
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, March 13, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com Alberta is the land of free enterprise, entrepreneurship and low taxes. Ontario is the home of a fat public service, an army of cultural welfare recipients and an electorate so liberal that even the bricks of the legislature building have a pinkish hue.
FULL STORY
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| Flaherty pins his hopes on a Goldilocks economy
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Friday, March 05, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.comJim Flaherty will never be Bay Street's favourite Finance Minister. But the man who authored the largest deficit in Canadian history is not deaf to the mood of business, and his fifth budget proves it.
FULL STORY
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| In CanWest battle, all roads lead to Goldman
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, February 20, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com If Leonard Asper could go back in time, he'd probably change a lot of his decisions at CanWest Global Communications, starting with that fateful day in 2006 when he climbed into bed with Goldman Sachs.
FULL STORY
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| For old media firms, iPad is not The Answer
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, January 30, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com In Apple's world, no development is described in ordinary terms. Every new milestone in the company's evolution is ''incredible'' or ''amazing''; each new product or device is ''revolutionary'' - or in the case of its new tablet computer, ''truly magical,'' as CEO Steve Jobs put it.
FULL STORY
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| Just when we need it least, more uncertainty for markets
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DEREK DeCLOET
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Saturday, January 23, 2010
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ddecloet@globeandmail.com Politics, the 19th-century politician Otto von Bismarck said, is the art of the possible. If he were alive today, in the age of television and instantaneous news, he might add: it's also the art of illusion.
FULL STORY
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