Posts By: Brent White

Old Foes, Now Friends

Posted by & filed under Marketing & Strategy, Student life.

Description: Rivals Peleton and Lululemon are now friends of sorts. Following a long legal “copy cat” dispute, Lululemon will begin manufacturing Peleton’s branded clothing, while at the same time it will stop producing its Mirror exercise platform and related on-line fitness classes. Retail analyst Neil Saunders, offered that both companies eventually realized that “dabbling in… Read more »

Moneris Back Online

Posted by & filed under Financial Accounting.

Description: A service outage by online payment processor Moneris on Saturday caused all sorts of problems for retailers and their customers. Darren Leroux of Moneris said that the system outage was approximately 90 minutes, impacting both debit and credit payments. Moneris indicated that this outage did not appear to be related to any sort of… Read more »

Biosteel’s Big Name Creditors

Posted by & filed under Accounting Principles, Marketing & Strategy.

Description: Failed sports drink company Biosteel has left some big-name creditors on the hook. The company owes over $400 million to creditors and its financial problems appear to be linked to its strategy of recruiting expensive professional athletes for its marketing efforts. Several NBA franchises are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars. TSN and Rogers… Read more »

Messy Breakup for Accountants?

Posted by & filed under Accounting Careers, Corporate Governance.

Description: It sounds like a bit of a messy breakup for Canada’s professional accountants. In June, the provincial bodies for Chartered Professional Accountants in both Ontario and Quebec informed the national umbrella organization, CPA Canada, that they were triggering the withdrawal mechanism that would see them leave in 18 months. Meanwhile though, six former chairs… Read more »

Twenty-Year Coding Error

Posted by & filed under Accounting Careers, Internal control.

Description: Injured workers in Ontario may have been surprised this week when the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) announced that more than 100,000 workers would be receiving payments to make up for being “shortchanged” over the last twenty years. These payments will total approximately $42 million. The situation can be attributed to a coding… Read more »

Square Problem

Posted by & filed under Data security, Financial Accounting.

Description: Payment processing company Square was facing problems on Thursday and Friday as customers were unable to access their accounts. Square has been a popular innovation for small vendors who use it to process payments from customers. The system outages also impacted Cash App, an application that is not available in Canada. Date:  September 8,… Read more »

Rat Infested?

Posted by & filed under Accounting Careers, Accounting Principles.

Description: Rat infested: It’s a headline that kind of gets your attention eh! When it comes to a description of our Prime Minister’s official residence, it’s a sad summary statement on the state of a public building. Justin Trudeau has not occupied 24 Sussex, his childhood home, since he was elected in 2015. And his… Read more »

Not Much to Hear

Posted by & filed under Auditing.

Description: Last week this blog spoke of how New Brunswick’s auditor general, Paul Martin, was about to face questions from a legislative committee on why so many staff (over one-third) have been leaving his office since the start of this year. But for Mr. Martin, it does not appear to have been all that much… Read more »