Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for June 20th, 2008

BCE Decision Today at 4:30 PM

Care to wager a few shillings on the results? I am sure that is what a few traders will be doing, in either direction, with the Supreme Court ready to bring down a decision on an appeal of the Quebec Supreme Court’s ruling stopping the BCE sale. This ruling will either kill the sale or put it back on track for now. As a share holder, I would hope the sale would continue, but who knows what the highest court in the land might decide.

The Nortel Three and their Day in Court

Frank Dunn, Douglas Beatty and Michael Gollogly had their arraignment in court yesterday under Fraud charges brought by the RCMP. This is interesting to me, since I lived through those days, and am curious now to hear about what exactly may have transpired during that time at Nortel.

What happened to cause all employees to get their “Return to profitability” bonus? I will be reading the coverage of this case very closely.

Important to note that Nortel the company is not part of these proceedings as a defendant, and they have stated they are co-operating fully with the RCMP investigation.

The Globe and Mail Report:

The RCMP alleged Mr. Dunn, Mr. Beatty and Mr. Gollogly fraudulently misstated Nortel’s results. Among the accusations are that the three “made false entries and omitted materials particular in the books and documents in regards to the financial results of Nortel.”

It will be very interesting to see how this is proven in court, or refuted, because I suspect this is going to get into some very technical aspects of Corporate Accounting Practices in Canada. I have had some of this explained to me, and I can say as a non-accountant, it is very confusing.

Rates Staying the Same

So what did the new Governor of the Bank of Canada know that we didn’t last week when he refused to lower rates, when the majority of experts were sure the rates were going to drop? Maybe he figured out that Inflation might be coming back, like we found out yesterday?  Does Mark Carney have a good crystal ball, or good information collecting skills? Either way, looks like he hit the nail on the head with that call last week.

Given Scotiabank, TD and BMO are raising their long term Mortgage Rates, makes me wonder what they might know as well?