Flaherty's bank crew a bit thin in China

pbest@globeandmail.com

Finance 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.

Instead, the banks say they sent the folks who are closer to the action in terms of doing business with China, such as CIBC's senior lender Raza Hasan; Royal Bank of Canada's Andrew Scace (vice-chairman of RBC Dominion Securities); Toronto-Dominion Bank's head of group strategy, Bernie Dorval; Bank of Nova Scotia vice-president Brendan King (who is based in Hong Kong); and Bank of Montreal's Gilles Ouellette, who runs its wealth management business.

One major financial company isn't represented on the trip, and indeed wasn't invited by Finance. That would be Fairfax Financial and its CEO, Prem Watsa. We hear they might be a little ticked off, especially given that Fairfax is working on a joint venture deal in China, according to sources.

the more things change

The new hot spot for Toronto's corporate elite these days is not the big-name, big price-point joints with star chefs and veal chops the size of Hummers. It's an old spot - a 25-year-old eatery in Little Italy called Trattoria Giancarlo, and the summer scene for the likes of beauty-biz baron Steve Hudson, retail executive Joe Mimran, philanthropist Joseph Rotman, Bay Streeter Lawrence Bloomberg, entrepreneur Brent Belzberg, carriage-trade builder Joe Brennan, and former Toronto Maple Leaf-turned-businessman Tie Domi. The restaurant is low-key, without a printed wine list but with a street-side terrace jammed with mismatched chairs. No Yabu Pushelberg design here. Some things never change, however: Spotted outside Giancarlo's recently was a new-model Rolls-Royce, which retails for close to half a million bucks.

stop the presses

Here's some good news for newspapers and their readers: U.S. advertising industry bible Ad Age says the slide in newspaper ad revenue is ending. "Sorry, haters of traditional media: Newspapers' slide is going to end," Ad Age reports on its website. "That's the word, at least, from a new forecast projecting that newspapers' print ad revenue will actually rebound 2.4 per cent next year."

A U.S. advertising research firm crunched numbers that predict that, by 2014, U.S. newspaper income will be up 8.7 per cent from 2009. "That will be short of its 2008 level," Ad Age quotes Borrell Associates, "but a long way from extinction."