A leading investors’ rights group in Quebec is pressing publicly traded Canadian companies to reveal what languages their board members speak, saying the disclosure is needed to ensure rising expectations for corporate diversity are being met. The call comes from Montreal-based Mouvement d’éducation et de défense des actionnaires, known as Médac. The group says the […]

The 2022 Shopify AGM put the spotlight on two controversial theories for driving corporate success: the founder-CEO and multi-class share structures. When it went public in 2015, Shopify’s multi-class structure was fairly standard for an aspirational tech unicorn, if still unusual relative to capital markets as a whole. In recent years an increasing proportion of […]

Canadian pension fund giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec is stepping away from a proposed new $10-billion light rail line in eastern Montreal after encountering seemingly insurmountable difficulties with the design of the downtown portion of the project. Quebec and Montreal will take over leadership of the venture, the two governments said in […]

Shopify Inc. co-founder, chair and chief executive Tobias Lutke has three young children. The billionaire is willing to give up the opportunity to pass along the company to his offspring in exchange for maintaining control for as long he works at the online commerce giant. Ottawa-based Shopify, Canada’s largest tech company, announced on Monday it plans […]

n will set this week on the special voting rights held by the four founders of Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc., leaving the Canadian convenience store giant more exposed to investor pressure than ever before. Its fate will be closely watched by both critics and defenders of dual class share structures. Laval, Que.-based Couche-Tard is one of […]

A recent boardroom clash at Rogers Communications Inc. has revealed the governance risk associated with dual-class share companies, but experts say businesses with that structure can be hard to avoid for investors because they’re big profit generators. Companies with dual-class shares issue different sets of common shares that have different voting and control rights. This […]

Michael Rousseau’s first speech to business leaders in Montreal was supposed to be his coming out party, a chance for Air Canada new chief executive to build credibility and tell the story of an airline – a pillar of the Quebec economy – in recovery mode. Instead, the CEO’s English-only talk, during which he revealed that […]

Canadian investor organizations want stricter requirements for companies with dual-class stocks to trade on public exchanges amid a growing debate about the drawbacks of such shares and a controversy over voting rights at Rogers Communications Inc. Dual-class stock structuring – where different classes of shares in a single company have different voting rights – has […]

In June 2009, IGOPP published a Policy Paper on “The Status of Women on Boards of Directors in Canada: Calling for Change”. Almost 12 years later, the issue of diversity on boards of directors still remains partly unresolved. Indeed, women’s representation on boards of directors has doubled during this period [from 15% in 2008 to […]

Since the publication in 1932 of Berle and Means’ The Modern Corporation and Private Property, “capitalist” societies have been engaged in a forlorn quest for an appropriate definition of the role, justification and “raison d’être” of large corporations. Except for the legal fiction of shareholders as owners, corporations of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, were […]

You have missed our virtual event on ” The Purpose of a Corporation and the Stakeholder Model ” with the renowned lawyer from New York,  Martin Lipton, founding partner of the prominent law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz  ? With the attendance of more than 300 participants, this conference, organised in partnership with ICD, tackled multiple governance […]

We take you back to early September and a brief review of the 24-hour Quebec Inc. torpedo of a proposed takeover of the Montreal-based Cogeco telecom companies — 24 hours that highlight investor, governance and competition issues. In the early evening of Tuesday, Sept. 1, Dexter Goei, CEO of the New York-based broadband company Altice […]

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. will let the sun set on the special voting rights held by its four founders. Executive chairman Alain Bouchard says that he and the three other men who built the Canadian convenience-store empire will let their 25-year-old special stock rights, which give them control over the company, expire next year as scheduled […]

The move by Rogers Communications Inc. and Altice USA to launch a hostile takeover bid for Cogeco Communications Inc. and parent Cogeco Inc. without the support of the Quebec companies’ controlling shareholder looks like a long-shot gamble to many experts. But they say similar past deals for family-controlled companies show there can be a path to victory […]

In a surprising move, Rogers and Altice USA made an offer to buy Cogeco and Cogeco Communications and split their assets between them. If Cogeco were a typical Canadian corporation with a one-share, one-vote capital structure, the would-be buyers could disregard any reticence or opposition by the board of directors and transmit their offer directly […]

Chairman of the Institute for Governance Yvan Allaire says that the blunt response from Louis Audet suggests the family that owns Cogeco might not be open to negotiating a selling price. To access the interview with M. Allaire, please click here.