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: It was a week of big deals. Osisko Mining, Power Engineers and Pringles were all bought out in multi-billion-dollar deals, and Tourmaline Oil made a big purchase of their own.
Also: Which company sent its stock market value soaring by US$21-billion simply by changing its chief executive? Here’s a hint: They serve coffee.
b. Canada’s temporary foreign workers program. The final report by a United Nations investigator is fiercely critical of Canada’s temporary foreign workers program. Canadian businesses are using the program to employ migrant workers in low-wage jobs such as counter attendants at fast-food restaurants – a tactic that allows employers to avoid having to raise wages to attract local workers.
d. Royal Bank of Canada. Nadine Ahn, former CFO at Royal Bank, is suing the bank in response to her firing four months ago, after an internal investigation that allegedly found she had an undisclosed personal relationship with a colleague that led to preferential treatment.
c. Bank of Nova Scotia. Scotiabank says its decision to buy a minority stake in Cleveland-based KeyCorp reflects its decision to keep more of its assets in North America. However, it’s not clear what owning a piece of a middling U.S. lender will do for Scotiabank. The Canadian lender’s stock fell on the news.
a. Gold Fields of South Africa. The acquisition of Osisko will help Gold Fields diversify away from some of the riskier African jurisdictions in which it operates.
c. Producing natural gas in British Columbia. Crew produces natural gas from the Montney resource, an important natural-gas play that spans northeast B.C. and northwest Alberta.
b. WSP Global. Montreal-based WSP hopes the acquisition will help it profit from the transition to greener energy. Large utilities are investing billions of dollars in decarbonizing their operations and modernizing their aging infrastructures.
b. Mars. Privately owned Mars paid a 33-per-cent premium to snap up Kellanova, a collection of snack and food brands previously owned by Kellogg. The deal will result in a junk food empire spanning everything from Mars and Snickers chocolate bars to Cheez-It and Pop Tarts.
a. Starbucks. Starbucks delighted investors by hiring Chipotle boss Brian Niccol as its new chief executive, replacing Laxman Narasimhan – dumped after only a year and a half in the role. The coffee peddler’s stock rocketed 24-per-cent higher on the news, adding US$21-billion to its stock market capitalization in a single day. Meanwhile, Chipotle, Mr. Niccol’s former employer, lost US$5.7-billion in stock market cap.
c. YouTube. Ms. Wojcicki, one of the most respected female executives in Silicon Valley, helped shape Google and led YouTube until stepping down last year.
d. Spout gibberish. Researchers found that training AI models on AI-generated data can render them useless. The phenomenon, called “model collapse,” raises questions about whether current high hopes for AI may fall flat.
a. It says GM is invading drivers’ privacy. Texas says GM installed technology that collects data about drivers and sold that data to insurers without drivers’ knowledge.
d. September. The Fed is widely expected to cut rates in September, as inflation shows signs of fading back to the central bank’s 2-per-cent target. The report this week showed consumer prices in July were 2.9-per-cent higher than a year earlier, the mildest increase in that year-over-year number since 2021.