Star Business Journal

By Natalie Wong Bloomberg Wed., May 15, 2019 What retail apocalypse? The head of First Capital Realty Inc. said rents have never been so high or vacancies so low in the shops it owns and operates. It helps to be the biggest retail landlord in Yorkville, one of Canada’s ritziest shopping districts, and to have much of your real estate in downtown cores, anchored by grocery stores, fitness centres and pharmacies. It’s a profile often overlooked by investors obsessed with the narrative that online shopping is crushing retail, chief executive officer Adam Paul said. “We’re definitely not representative of the broader retail environment because our focus is very specialized within retail,” Paul, 44, said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Toronto office. “It’s urban focused and it’s necessity-based focus.” First Capital will benefit from this “super-urban” strategy as Canadian cities densify amid rapid … [Read more...] about Yorkville helps First Capital Realty weather retail apocalypse

By Erik Hertzberg Bloomberg Wed., May 15, 2019 Vancouver’s housing market is continuing to stumble, with Montreal taking up the slack. The sales to new-listings ratio — a measure of how tight a particular market is — fell to 0.31 in April in the Pacific Coast city, according to data Wednesday from the Canadian Real Estate Association. That’s down from as high as 0.78 at the beginning of 2018. Readings below 0.4 often signal a cooling market and a drop in prices, while readings above 0.6 indicate the opposite. Vancouver’s ratio is now at the lowest since 2008. Benchmark prices dropped 8.5 per cent in April from a year earlier. Meanwhile, Montreal’s housing market appears to be getting tighter. The city’s sales-to-listings ratio has averaged 0.74 over the past six months. The April data show prices were up 6.3 per cent last month on a year-over-year basis. Rising interest rates, changes to mortgage rules and various foreign buyer … [Read more...] about Vancouver’s housing market reels while Montreal’s tightens up

By Mark Gurman Bloomberg Shawn Donnan Wed., May 15, 2019 For more than a year, Apple Inc. avoided major damage from the U.S. trade war with China, thanks in part to a White House charm offensive by chief executive officer Tim Cook. But the company now faces its first major hit — from both sides of the dispute. A new round of tariffs proposed by the U.S. on Monday includes mobile phones, meaning the iPhone, Apple’s most-important product that is made almost entirely in China, may be encumbered with a 25-per-cent import levy. There are other products on the list that would affect Apple too, such as laptops and tablets. That leaves the company with a difficult choice: Raise prices on already-pricey products and risk missing out on sales, or absorb the extra cost and let profits suffer. There’s a “very real risk of higher import costs and/or U.S. consumer demand destruction depending on whether Apple decides to pass along some of the tariff … [Read more...] about Trump’s tariffs may make your next iPhone more expensive

By David Stringer Bloomberg Wed., May 15, 2019 Australian gold producer St Barbara Ltd. agreed to pay $722 million to acquire Atlantic Gold Corp., adding a mine in Canada as the sector’s wave of consolidation continues. St Barbara offered $2.90 a share for Vancouver-based Atlantic Gold, about a 40-per-cent premium to Tuesday’s close, and will fund the deal from cash reserves and by raising about AUS$490 million in a share sale to existing holders, according to a statement Wednesday. Atlantic said its board has unanimously approved the deal. The global gold sector is being reshaped by a bout of deal-making led by Barrick Gold Corp.’s $5.4 billion acquisition of Randgold Resources Ltd. and a second major merger that created Newmont Goldcorp Corp. Atlantic, which operates the Moose River operation in Nova Scotia, forecasts production this year of as much as 98,000 ounces of gold, with expansion plans to more than double that rate, according to filings. … [Read more...] about Australian miner buys Canada’s Atlantic Gold Corp. for $722M

By David Gelles The New York Times Natalie Kitroeff Wed., May 15, 2019 Weeks after the first fatal crash of the 737 Max, pilots from American Airlines pressed Boeing executives to work urgently on a fix. In a closed-door meeting, they even argued that Boeing should push the authorities to take an emergency measure that would very likely result in the grounding of the Max. The Boeing executives resisted. They did not want to rush out a fix, and said they expected pilots to be able to handle problems. Mike Sinnett, a vice president at Boeing, acknowledged that the manufacturer was assessing potential design flaws with the plane, including new anti-stall software. But he balked at taking a more aggressive approach, saying it was not yet clear that the new system was to blame for the Lion Air crash, which killed 189 people. “No one has yet to conclude that the sole cause of this was this function on the airplane,” Sinnett said, according to a recording of … [Read more...] about Boeing resisted pilots’ calls for urgent fix of 737 Max jets