Where in Canada will Meta build its artificial intelligence data centre? Take our business and investing news quizMeta/Reuters
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: Ottawa chose Germany’s TKMS to build the country’s first significant submarine fleet, U.S. President Donald Trump met with NATO leaders and Air Canada named a new CEO. Take our quiz and find out what happened in business.
d. Canada owns four subs, all of which were purchased second-hand, and only one of which is typically operational. The Canadian military says it needs 12 subs to properly defend the country.
c. Meta Platforms plans to build a massive AI data centre in Sturgeon County, north of Edmonton. It will sprawl across 1,750 acres, making it bigger than Stanley Park in Vancouver.
a, b, d. Mr. Trump threw the NATO summit into disarray when he demanded the United States cut trade ties with Spain and renewed his claims on Greenland. He also said the fragile U.S.-Iran truce is over and labelled Iranian leaders “scum” and “sick people.” The good news here? The U.S. president didn’t launch into his usual 51st state insults about Canada. And at least according to him, the NATO meetings demonstrated love and “a lot of unity.” Sure thing.
d. Apex is investing in the Northern Super League, a six-team women’s soccer league co-founded by two-time Olympic bronze medalist Diana Matheson and business partner Thomas Gilbert. The league, which kicked off a year ago, said it generated more than $30-million in commercial revenue in its first season, including ticket sales, merchandise and sponsorships from partners such as Canadian Tire and Bank of Montreal.
a. Bitcoin has lost about 40 per cent of its value in Canadian dollar terms over the past 12 months, but that hasn’t stopped companies from seeking to cash in on investors’ willingness to trade digital tokens. On June 30, Webull Canada announced it would offer cryptocurrency trading after receiving approval from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization. One day later, the U.S-based brokerage Robinhood Markets, officially launched its popular trading app in Canada with a focus on crypto.
b. GFL has been approached by two private equity firms about a potential privatization. The bidders are looking to capitalize on a recent market sell-off across the waste management sector.
b. Forty-two per cent of Canadian manufacturing companies have moved production to the United States or are considering doing so because of trade tensions, according to a KPMG survey of 275 businesses. Last week, United States Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said the U.S. is not renewing the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement “in its current form”. The decision triggers a rolling annual review for up to a decade, at which point it will expire if an extension isn’t agreed upon.
c. Microsoft is cutting 4,800 jobs, or about 2.1 per cent of its global work force, as it overhauls its Xbox gaming business. Despite spending tens of billions of dollars to expand Xbox, including its blockbuster acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has struggled to narrow the gap with Sony’s PlayStation and Nintendo.
a. MDA Space of Brampton, Ont., is buying a 70-per-cent stake in the French earth observation company Collecte Localisation Satellites for roughly $920-million in cash. CLS, headquartered in Toulouse, France, was founded in 1986 as a subsidiary of the French space agency and provides a range of space-based data analytics services. It employs 1,200 people.
d. Samsung’s share price fell as much as 10 per cent despite the boom in earnings. It appears that investors’ expectations are so high that even a massive increase in profits can’t satisfy them.
c. The pace of Canadian merger and acquisition activity is plummeting. Just 460 transactions involving Canadian companies were announced during the second quarter, according to a report from LSEG Data & Analytics. That is the lowest deal count for any three-month period since at least 2005. What’s driving the fall in activity? Trade uncertainty, fallout from the Iran war and rising borrowing costs all seem to be playing a role.
a, b, c. Mr. Van der Werff’s linguistic ability puts most Canadian executives to shame. The new Air Canada CEO speaks six languages: his native Dutch as well as English, French, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. No Mandarin, though – at least, not yet.