Description: Canada’s oil producing provinces are facing pressures on their finances with decreasing royalty revenues. This past week, the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador released its budget for 2016-17, showing an increase in a range of taxes and fees. This included an increase in the Harmonized Sales Tax as well as a special deficit reduction… Read more »
Posts By: Brent White
Shareholder pressure up; salaries down
Description: With shareholder pressure on the uptick, the latest survey of salaries among Canadian bank executives shows that overall compensation is down. Board’s may be looking at performance benchmarks more closely, accounting for some of the reduction in salary. But it is possible that the fact that four of the five CEO’s at the largest… Read more »
Profits up; time for cuts
Description: Despite the fact that profits are up, Scotiabank announced that it is cutting jobs and closing branches. With consumers moving more and more transactions online, and banks bracing for Uberization of the banking world, Scotia is looking towards an uncertain future. But Scotia is not alone. Other banks have been cutting as well, and… Read more »
Budget transparency?
Description: Last year, the Liberals under Justin Trudeau latched onto the transparency theme. But last week the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) criticized the Trudeau government for what we might call a lack of transparency. The PBO said the latest federal budget contains some unrealistic forecasts, in particular one which underestimates the level of private sector… Read more »
Those Panama Papers
Description: It was hard to miss the news this past week of the so-called Panama Papers. This vast leak of over 12 million documents has provided lots of data on potential tax avoidance for journalists to sort through, and plenty of headaches for politicians and public figures forced to account for dealing with the Panamanian… Read more »
Secret bank fine
Description: FinTRAC, the Financial Transaction and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, imposed its first fine on a Canadian bank this past week. The fine of $1.1 million was because a Canadian bank did not report some type of suspicious transaction to the authorities. The only problem was FinTRAC didn’t reveal who got fined. And all… Read more »
Profiting from the FBI success
Description: This past week the FBI announced that it had cracked the Apple iPhone associated with the San Bernadino tragedy. Subsequently, the FBI withdrew from its court action against Apple as the need for Apple’s co-operation in unlocking the phone was now a moot point. Speculation is that the FBI’s success against the iPhone may… Read more »
And so it continues . . .
Description: And so it continues. The Blackberry bad news keeps coming, almost like the old football penalty of piling on. Despite introducing a new Android device called the Priv phone, revenue for the quarter declined. Blackberry failed to meet analysts’ revenue projections, despite this new device which combines the advantages of Blackberry’s vaunted security with… Read more »
Good time to cut the debt
Description: The general theme is that things have been tough for the last little while in the oil patch. But some companies with cash to spare have been taking advantage of the downturn to repurchase their own bonds at “60 cents on the dollar.” Companies like Encana and Repsol SA are reducing their long-term debt… Read more »
A cautionary tale
Description: Michael Koonin is in sales. His employer, Salbro Bottle of Woodbridge, Ontario normally paid his bill for data usage on his iPad and his cellphone each month. But in February Salbro balked when Telus billed $25,000 for roaming charges. The data misadventures began when Koonin sold the iPad on eBay to someone in California. Koonin didn’t… Read more »
Burnley Understanding Financial Accounting, 3rd Canadian Edition
Kimmel Financial Accounting, 8th Canadian Edition
Weygandt Accounting Principles, 9th Canadian Edition
Kimmel Survey of Accounting, 2nd Edition
Kieso Intermediate Accounting, 13th Canadian Edition
Weygandt Managerial Accounting, 6th Canadian Edition
Farmer Cost Accounting, 1st Edition
Savage Accounting Information Systems, 1st Edition