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: Warren Buffett’s retirement from Berkshire Hathaway puts a Canadian executive at the top of the conglomerate. But where in Canada did Greg Abel earn his business degree? Take our quiz to find out.
a. University of Alberta. The Edmonton-born Mr. Abel earned his bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Alberta. Now he has the formidable task of replacing Mr. Buffett, who produced a 5,500,000 per cent return for investors during his long tenure at Berkshire.
d. Parkland. Dallas-based Sunoco made a friendly takeover bid for Calgary-based fuel-distributor Parkland. The Canadian company has been locked in a two-year battle with its largest shareholder.
a. Ryan Reynolds. The Vancouver-born star of Deadpool helped develop a line of scrambled egg boxes.
b. Skype. Founded in 2003, Skype pioneered online video calling and at one point boasted 300 million users, according to the Washington Post. However, it failed to keep up with growing competition from the likes of WhatsApp and Zoom. Microsoft, which acquired the service in 2009, closed it down this week and urged remaining users to switch over to Microsoft Teams for their video calls.
a. New drugs. The meteoric rise of weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy hit hard at Weight Watchers. Don’t write it off yet, though: The company, which is struggling with heavy debt, insists it will restructure its balance sheet and remain in business.
c. Go private. Skechers has agreed to be taken private by 3G Capital for US$9.42-billion in the footwear industry’s biggest buyout to date. The company will leave public markets after 26 years as it grapples with the impact of steep U.S. tariffs.
d. Retain its non-profit structure. OpenAI spent months pursuing a plan to convert itself into a for-profit business, but reversed course this week and said its non-profit parent will continue to control the company.
b. Abu Dhabi. Disney said this week that it is planning its first theme park in the Middle East as it attempts to reach increasingly affluent consumers in the region.
c. Apple said it was looking at alternatives to Google for its Safari browser. Google is now the default search option for anyone using Safari, so any move by Apple to offer users an alternative might endanger Google’s dominance of the lucrative market for search.
d. “A national security threat.” Yep, apparently movies shot on foreign locations constitute a national security threat – at least in Mr. Trump’s mind. He vowed this week to impose tariffs on those films.
b. Cut its dividend. BCE slashed its dividend by more than half. The company has been labouring under massive debt while paying out more than it generates in free cash flow.
c. Bill Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, pledged this week to give away almost his entire personal wealth over the next two decades.