Welcome to The Globe and Mail’s business and investing news quiz. Join us each week to test your knowledge of the stories making the headlines. Our business reporters come up with the questions, and you can show us what you know.
This week: The union representing Montreal dockworkers staged a three-day strike at two terminals. The Maritime Employers Association stopped work at the Viau and Maisonneuve terminals, which combined handle more than 40 per cent of container traffic at the country’s second-largest port. The three-day job action by a quarter of the port’s 1,200 loaders and checkers began Monday, one day before dockworkers began a strike at three-dozen ports in the United States.
But while the shipping containers stopped moving this week, there was plenty of action in other parts of the business world, from hockey equipment makers to the Chinese stock market.
1The weather is growing cooler, but the market for hockey-related deals is suddenly red hot. Which shinny-related company did Swedish asset manager Altor Equity Partners gobble up this week for $600-million?
a. Bauer Hockey
b. Sher-Wood
c. CCM
d. True Temper
c. CCM. Altor, owner of the Rossignol ski brand, bought CCM, Canada’s oldest hockey-equipment maker. Altor hopes to expand sales of hockey gear to women and to first-generation immigrants.
2More hockey deals. Which company did Fairfax Financial Holdings of Toronto agree to acquire this week?
a. Bauer Hockey
b. Sher-Wood
c. CCM
d. True Temper
a. Bauer Hockey. Fairfax will assume control of Bauer when the transaction closes later this year. It did not reveal the value of the deal.
3Toronto-Dominion Bank will pay more than US$20-million to U.S. authorities to settle allegations of doing what to the market for U.S. Treasury bonds?
a. ‘Bluffing’ it
b. ‘Spoofing’ it
c. ‘Front running’ it
d. ‘Undercutting’ it
b. ‘Spoofing’ it. TD Securities USA, a unit of TD, admitted to “spoofing” the U.S. Treasuries market, according to a court filing on Monday. Spoofing is a way of manipulating the market by entering orders that are not intended to be executed. The bogus orders can create a false appearance of demand.
4Which country just became the first Group of Seven economy to stop using coal in electricity production?
a. Canada
b. United States
c. Germany
d. Britain
d. Britain’s last coal-fired generating plant closed on Monday. The Ratcliffe-on-Soar station near Nottingham opened in 1967 and once employed as many as 3,000 workers.
5What is the “600-hundred-pound beaver in the room” for Canadian tech companies, according to Shopify Inc. president Harvey Finkelstein?
a. The impending U.S. presidential election
b. Interprovincial trade barriers
c. Ottawa’s attempted regulation of AI development
d. Lack of ambition
d. Lack of ambition. Mr. Finkelstein told a tech conference in Toronto this week that Canadian entrepreneurs lack ambition compared with their U.S. counterparts and have a reputation for selling their businesses to larger competitors rather than attempting to grow them.
6It has been a very good year for anyone connected to AI. Consider OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. At the start of last year the privately held company was worth US$29-billion. After a funding round this week, it is now valued at:
a. US$82-billion
b. US$110-billion
c. US$157-billion
d. US$195-billion
c. US$157-billion. Now pegged at US$157-billion, OpenAI is one of the most valuable private companies in existence. However, the U.S. start-up expects to lose US$5-billion this year. It has suffered a rash of executive departures and is facing growing competition from other AI companies.
7Harold Daggett recently boasted he could “cripple” the economy of the U.S. Who is he?
a. A Republican candidate for governor of Texas
b. A union leader
c. A hedge fund investor with a mammoth stake in U.S. Treasury bonds
d. A British AI researcher
b. A union leader. Mr. Daggett leads the International Longshoremen’s Association, which were striking this week at ports along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf Coast. In a video released by the union in September, he declared, “I will cripple you, and you have no idea what that means.” The union is demanding large pay increases and an end to any automation that could threaten union jobs. U.S. dock workers and port operators reached a tentative deal on Thursday.
8LVMH, the luxury goods maker with stakes in consumer goods (Louis Vuitton), high-end drinks (Moet Hennessy) and expensive watches (TAG Heuer), signed a deal this week to become a top sponsor of what sport?
a. Formula One auto racing
b. The National Football League
c. Pro pickleball
d. Olympic break dancing
a. Formula One auto racing. LVMH said it had signed a 10-year deal to sponsor Formula One. It will replace long-time sponsor Rolex.
9There has been only one trading day this week for Chinese stocks because of the country’s Golden Week holiday, but it was a doozy as the benchmark index jumped 8.5 per cent. What is driving the new optimism about Chinese stocks?
a. Signs of economic recovery
b. Surging global sales of Chinese-made electric vehicles
c. Promises of government support
d. A speech in which Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to stop interfering in the market
c. Promises of government support. Beijing has made a rare commitment to aggressively stimulate its sputtering economy, including US$114-billion in funding for new stock purchases.
10What risk to Canadian banks is on the rise, according to the federal regulator of financial institutions?
a. Mortgage defaults
b. Cryptocurrency fraud
c. Computer hackers
d. Money-laundering issues
d. Money-laundering issues. Peter Routledge, chief of the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, said this week that money-laundering issues have “risen in prominence” for Canadian banks. Toronto-Dominion Bank is bracing for an historic fine of more than $4-billion to settle allegations by U.S. regulators that its money-laundering controls were lax.
11You really can buy anything at Costco. What did the massive discount retailer start selling this week in the U.S.?
a. Platinum bars
b. Gold bars
c. Silver coins
d. Palladium bars
a. Platinum bars. Costco started selling platinum bars this week in the U.S. to follow up on its previous success peddling gold bars and silver coins.
Answer all of the questions to see your result
