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Prime Minister Mark Carney boards a plane in Ottawa, on Wednesday.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: Barrick Mining of Toronto filed paperwork for its initial public offering of a minority share in its North American business, shares of GFL Environmental tumbled and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is laying off dozens of employees. Take our quiz and find out what happened in business.
1What did Prime Minister Mark Carney term “outrageous” this week?
a. The price of milk
b. The conduct of a U.S. trade negotiator
c. The sale of an auto plant
d. The situation in the Strait of Hormuz
c. Mr. Carney lambasted auto maker Stellantis, calling its move to sell its car plant in Brampton, Ont., to defence contractor Roshel “completely outrageous.” The Prime Minister vowed to protect workers and ensure that previous government subsidies to Stellantis are returned. “Stellantis is failing to respect their commitment to the workers of this plant and also to the Canadian government and Canadians,” Mr. Carney told reporters in Montreal.
2The stock price of chip maker Nvidia hit the skids this week following reports that chief executive Jensen Huang had an affair with a woman alleged to be a Chinese spy. Mr. Huang, who had been one of the tech industry’s most admired leaders, eventually resigned. What are secret agents who seduce their targets known as?
a. Fifth columnists
b. Honeytraps
c. Moles
d. Good spies
b. Such agents are commonly known as honeytraps. In the case of Nvidia, China has denied that it used a honeytrap to spy on Mr. Huang, calling such claims “groundless speculation and slander.” Rather than being a perpetrator of such deceptions, Beijing claims it is typically the victim. The Ministry of State Security, China’s top intelligence agency, regularly warns of honeytrap operations run by foreign countries for the purpose of collecting sensitive information from Chinese citizens.
3Karen Karniol-Tambour has an important new job. What is it?
a. Head of Ottawa’s new sovereign wealth fund
b. Head of Brookfield Asset Management
c. Head of McGill University
d. Acting head of Nvidia
a. Ms. Karniol-Tambour has been named as the first chief executive of Ottawa’s new Canada Strong Fund. The sovereign wealth fund will have an initial capital commitment of $25-billion and aims to invest in nation-building projects and companies deemed strategic. Ms. Karniol-Tambour is currently the co-chief investment officer at U.S.-based hedge fund manager Bridgewater Associates.
4Which European nation slowed to a standstill this week as millions of people demonstrated in the streets?
a. France
b. Germany
c. Spain
d. Great Britain
c. Spain’s embattled government confronted a nationwide strike this week after union leaders called for a public protest over soaring housing costs and stagnant wages. The general strike, the nation’s first since 2012, came ahead of a snap election on Nov. 29 called by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
5Why are three Canadian cable companies complaining to the federal TV regulator?
a. They’re upset at blackouts of NFL games
b. They’re angry about extra fees for NHL games
c. They’re disturbed by limits on European soccer coverage
d. They’re irked by NBA commercial requirements
b. The cable companies say that Sportsnet shouldn’t be allowed to charge customers an extra $13 per month to get NHL games on Monday nights. Eastlink, Cogeco and SaskTel filed a complaint with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission alleging that Rogers Communications acted in an anti-competitive manner by introducing the surcharge this season.
6Barrick Mining of Toronto raised eyebrows this week when it filed paperwork for its initial public offering of a minority share in its North American business. Where will the shares be listed?
a. London
b. Shanghai
c. Toronto
d. New York
d. Peter Munk, the founder of Barrick, was a vocal Canadian patriot. His successors appear to be following a different path. The company announced this week that it will be listing the shares for its new unit, to be called American Barrick Gold Corp., in New York. The miner said earlier in the year it intended to seek a secondary stock listing for American Barrick in Toronto, but that no longer appears to be part of the plan.
7Stocks in the artificial-intelligence sector have been under pressure recently, but this week one fortunate company saw its stock price jump 25 per cent in a single day. What is the name of that company?
a. CoreWeave
b. OpenAI
c. Meta Platforms
d. Palantir
a. CoreWeave rents out AI supercomputers and builds AI-focused data centres. Its shares jumped after the New Jersey-based company reported strong revenue growth and calmed investors’ nerves by signalling a pullback from its recent borrowing binge.
8Why did shares of GFL Environmental tumble this week?
a. It reported disappointing earnings
b. Its chief executive resigned
c. It lost an important court case
d. It turned down an opportunity to go private
d. GFL shares fell after the board of the big trash hauler said it was formally shutting down a review of unsolicited bids to take the company private for more than US$20-billion. Known for its bright green garbage trucks, GFL was founded in Vaughan, Ont., in 2007 by entrepreneur Patrick Dovigi. It is now headquartered in Miami.
9The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board is laying off dozens of employees in which area?
a. Its private-equity division
b. Its technology-investing division
c. Its active-equities division
d. Its environmental-investing division
c. You think you have problems picking winning stocks? So does CPPIB. It is laying off dozens of employees from its active equities division, which invests in public companies and those that are soon to be listed publicly. Somehow, in the middle of a great stock market boom, the division has managed to lose $6-billion over five years. Ouch.
10Saskatchewan-based fertilizer giant Nutrien Ltd. is close to signing a major deal to ship its potash from a port in:
a. Washington State
b. Northern British Columbia
c. Nova Scotia
d. Ontario
a. Whatever happened to elbows up? Nutrien is preparing to spend between US$500-million and US$1-billion to build an export terminal at the Port of Longview, Wash. The company considered Canadian ports but selected the Washington option as its preferred site in November last year. This week it presented a development plan to the port’s board of commissioners.
11Artificial-intelligence pioneer Anthropic is getting ready for one of the biggest initial public offerings in history. How much of the IPO is being set aside for retail investors?
a. All of it
b. About half
c. A third
d. Up to 20 per cent
d. Anthropic plans to set aside up to 20 per cent of the shares offered in its IPO for retail investors in select markets, a larger allocation than is typical for major U.S. offerings where shares have historically gone primarily to institutional investors and wealthy clients.
12Talking of stock market debuts: How have investors who bought SpaceX on its first day of trading in June fared with their investment?
a. They have lost about half their money
b. They have lost about a fifth of their money
c. They have gained about 10 per cent
d. They are up more than 25 per cent
b. Investors who bought SpaceX shares on the day that the company began trading on June 12 are nursing losses of around 19 per cent compared to a gain of 2.5 per cent in the broad S&P 500 index over the same period. Investors who managed to snag shares in the company’s highly anticipated IPO are doing considerably better, but are still far from making a fortune. They are sitting on gains of about 3.5 per cent.
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