Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: Talks continued between Air Canada and the union representing its pilots to avert a possible strike or lockout. Both sides will be in legal strike or lockout positions on Sept 18. That wasn’t the only bit of acrimony in the business world this week. Canada Bread Co. Ltd. is seeking damages from its former majority owner Maple Leaf Foods Inc. related to an alleged industrywide bread price-fixing scheme. Canada Bread’s parent company, Mexico-based Grupo Bimbo, has previously said that it was unaware of the bread maker’s role in fixing prices before its $1.83-billion acquisition in 2014. Along with this big bread news, there was also tantalizing shifts in the food business involving Campbell Soup and General Mills.
c. Drop “soup” from its name. Management said this week the company intends to drop “soup” from its name and become Campbell’s Co. It says the new label will better reflect the company’s diverse product offerings, including Prego pasta sauce and Goldfish crackers.
a. $1.76. Canadians are backing away from debt as higher interest rates make it more expensive to carry loans, However, the nation can’t start declaring victory over indebtedness just yet. Thanks to those higher interest rates, the portion of Canadians’ take-home pay that is consumed by debt payments now stands at nearly 15 per cent, among the highest readings on record.
b. Billionaire Jared Isaacman after the first privately funded spacewalk. Isaacman, 41, founder of the Shift4 credit-card processing company, has declined to say how much he invested in the flight aboard a rocket operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company.
d. Porter Airlines baggage handlers. Porter Airlines is the only one of these groups to avoid labour strife in recent months.
c. Huawei. China’s Huawei introduced its new trifold Mate XT only hours after Apple unveiled its new iPhone 16. The new Huawei product will sell for the equivalent of US$2,800.
a. Brookfield Asset Management said the move would allow it to be included in a wider range of stock market indexes.
b. The Fort McMurray fires in 2016. The Calgary storm will cost insurers about $2.8-billion, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, but that still comes up considerably short of the $3.6-billion in claims caused by the Fort McMurray blaze.
d. Eleven years. The judge called Mr. Nygard, 83, a “sexual predator” as he sentenced him to 11 years in prison for multiple crimes committed decades ago. However, Mr. Nygard’s actual time behind bars will work out to only seven years after credit for time already spent in custody, and he could be out on parole in only two years.
a. Its North American yogurt business. General Mills said it will sell its Canadian and U.S. yogurt businesses to a pair of French companies.
b. Productivity improves. Canada’s productivity – the amount of output produced per hour of work – has stagnated since the arrival of the pandemic, according to the TD report. In terms of real output per capita, Canada has fallen back to 2014 levels – a shocking and disappointing development.
d. Apple. A long-running court case finally reached its conclusion when Europe’s top court ordered Apple to pay the equivalent of US$14-billion in back taxes to Ireland. The 10-year-old case has to do with tax benefits that Apple received from Ireland over the course of a couple of decades.
c. He sold a large portion of his Berkshire stake. Mr. Jain, one of Mr. Buffett’s most trusted lieutenants, sold more than half his stake in Berkshire, according to regulatory filings.