The bid by the London Stock Exchange Group Plc, for the owner of Canada’s main bourse may face
opposition as the Canadian government reviews its foreign
ownership rules after blocking a hostile takeover of Potash
Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc.
Canadian law allows the government to reject foreign
takeovers that don’t provide a “net benefit” to the country.
The Ontario and Quebec securities regulators would also have to
approve any sale of more than 10 percent of the voting shares of TMX Group Inc., owner of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
“Exchanges and the capital markets are viewed as national
assets,” said Cameron Webster, a managing director at Sandstone
Asset Management Inc. in Calgary, which oversees C$200 million
($201 million). “To the extent that a U.K. owner could be
viewed as having influence on dictating rules of the market,
that could potentially be a political football.”
The LSE agreed today to buy TMX for about C$3.2 billion in
stock. LSE shareholders will own 55 percent of the company,
while TMX investors will hold the rest, the exchanges said today
in a statement. TMX shareholders will receive 2.9963 LSE shares
for each they own, valuing the Toronto-based company at about
C$42.88 a share, 6 percent more than yesterday’s closing price.
A sale to the London exchange would be the largest foreign
takeover of a financial services company in Canada, where banks
and insurers are protected by ownership limits.
Industry Minister Tony Clement, who would have to approve
the deal under the Investment Canada Act, announced a review of
the foreign investment approval process in November after his
government blocked the proposed $40 billion bid for Potash Corp.
of Saskatchewan by BHP Billiton Ltd.
" Is it worth circulating 'pennies' in our economy?? .."..
" the penny has so little purchasing power that more and more Canadians are refusing it as a change for their purchases ".....
It was almost exactly four years ago that a widely quoted study from
Desjardins tallied the cost of using the penny and recommended scrapping
it.
Then last month, a Senate committee came to the same conclusion, saying
it costs a half-cent more to make a penny than it's worth. And just
yesterday, calling it a "nuisance," Finance Minister Jim Flaherty
admitted the penny “probably doesn’t have that great a future.”
Come on already, get on with it. Pennies are junking up my dresser,
which bugs my wife, they’re a pain to roll, and they clog the hose on
the vacuum. And if the advertised price at the store is $8.99, that
won’t include tax so you’re not getting the penny back anyway.
Sure, pennies are used in the odd phrase - A penny for your thoughts, my
two cents worth - and they can be collectibles. And then there’s The
Copper Penny restaurant where the Queen’s University kids hang out in
Kingston, Ont.
But besides that, what use is the penny in this day and age? In
mid-February, 2007, when Desjardins issued its lengthy report, it
pointed out then the it costs at least $130-million a year - that’s more
than $4 per person - to keep it in circulation. Rounding off to the
nearest nickel was the way to go, its authors argued.
“The penny has so little purchasing power that more and more Canadians
are refusing it as change for their purchases,” Desjardins said. “They
instead make them available to the retailer and next customer by placing
them in a container near the cash register for this purpose. Other
consumers accumulate large quantities of pennies and rarely take the
time to roll them and bring them to the bank. Others simply throw them
away.”
Here’s what the researchers found:
The number of loonies in circulation
since 1987, when the paper money was replaced, reached 852 million by
the end of 2005. The number of toonies, introduced in 1996, reached 554
million by 2005. Together, the coins represented $1.96-billion, equal to
61 loonies per capita at the time. “Over the five years from 2001 to
2005, the value of these two coins has increased at a relatively stable
pace that is compatible with nominal GDP (approximately 5 per cent).” For
pennies, the researchers calculated that the total number issued since
1908 had reached 30.5 billion coins, or almost 953 pennies per capita,
by the end of 2005. In the 2001-2005 period, the government issued an
average 816 million pennies a year, or more than 25 per capita.
“These figures on the number of pennies in circulation and on their
annual increase show clearly that the one-cent coin is not very useful
and that consumers horde or throw it away rather than deposit it and put
it back into the distribution system.
That was the finding in 2007 - before the recession, when every penny counted - and the argument still holds water today.
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