Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for December 12th, 2006

That’s a good thing at the end of it now. With the new regulatory penalties implemented it is a good thing for BCE to stay the course.

Elimination of holding company operations

BCE also announced today that it will not move forward with the planned
conversion into an income trust announced by the company on October 11, 2006.
However, the company is continuing with previously announced plans to simplify
its corporate structure and eliminate BCE’s holding company operations. As
part of this process, BCE intends, at its next annual shareholders meeting, to
change its name to Bell Canada Inc. and will have two operating businesses:
Bell and Bell Aliant Regional Communications. Bell Canada also intends to
change its name to Bell Inc. at the same time.

BCE looks to be figuring out what their business is and how they want to run it, and that’s what a Blue Chip is supposed to do, right? They will continue to buy back stock and increase dividends as well. Yup, I hold stock in this company, so take my comments however you like. –C8j

Lots of interesting news these days.

First the CRTC (the telecommunication regulator in Canada) has decided to “kind of” deregulate the home phone business, which it hopes will drive down the price of home phones. Now this will only really benefit you (if it does at all) if you are in a larger urban center in Canada, but it may mean cheaper home phone rates, we hope. Will this save us money on our phone bills, only time will tell, but it might.

We may hear from the Fed (no not K-Fed) in the U.S. about what their plans are for interest rates. Yes, we in Canada set our own rates, but when the U.S. coughs, Canada gets a cold, so we always watch closely in that area.

The Bank of Canada thinks Bank mergers might be a good thing. As a stock holder in some of these banks, I am not sure I like this idea, since monopolies tend to get fat and lazy and don’t try very hard to make a lot of money, if their execs are getting enough money. I think I like seeing competition especially in this area. Given the MONSTROUS profits these guys make, I think competition is a good thing.

Barrons seems to think that former Telecom Giant Nortel may have turned the corner and may start coming back. Skeptics wonder if that might be a little premature, as do I. Let’s see good numbers before we start claiming comebacks.

The most interesting for me is that I no longer have to retire at age 65 in Ontario any more! Is that good news or bad news? Well, given my son only turns 21 when I am 65, I suspect I will be working well into my 70’s, so at least I have that option now.

Interesting stuff, if you think about it a bit. Maybe Nortel could merge with a bank? –C8j