TokioWegen schwindender Aussichten auf eine baldige Lösung des US-Handelsstreits mit China hat die Tokioter Börse am Montag Verluste hinnehmen müssen. Der Nikkei der 225 führenden Werte gab im Vormittagshandel um 1,4 Prozent auf 21.934 Punkte nach. Der breiter gefasste Topix verringerte sich um ein Prozent auf 1641 Punkte.
Bei den Einzelwerten brachen die Aktien von Fast Retailing um fünf Prozent ein. Der Bekleidungs-Einzelhändler enttäuschte die Märkte mit seinem Umsatzrückgang im Oktober um zehn Prozent.
Der Euro legte im fernöstlichen Handel zum Dollar leicht zu. Die europäische Einheitswährung kostete zuletzt 1,1396 Dollar. Zum Yen gab die US-Währung auf 113,15 Yen nach. Der Schweizer Franken notierte bei rund 1,0040 Franken je Dollar und bei etwa 1,1435 Franken je Euro.
Zum Abschluss des zwölften Spieltages trifft Simon Terodde mit dem 1. FC Köln auf den Hamburger Sport Verein. Foto: Uwe Anspach
(Foto: dpa)
Dabei geht es heuteDabei geht es heute (20.30 Uhr) nicht nur um die Tabellenführung. Ein Sieg hätte sicher auch eine psychologische Wirkung.
AUSGANGSLAGE: Der 1. FC Köln ging mit 21 Zählern als Tabellenführer in den zwölften Spieltag. Punktgleich dahinter die Hamburger. Nach den Sonntags-Spielen übernahm HSV-Stadtrivale FC St. Pauli (22) nach dem Sieg bei Arminia Bielefeld vorerst Platz eins. Den werden die Kiezkicker in jedem Fall verlieren, selbst wenn sich Hamburg und Köln unentschieden trennen. Der 1. FC Köln wartet seit drei Spielen auf einen Sieg in der Liga. Der HSV tut sich besonders im heimischen Stadion schwer. In sechs Partien im Volksparkstadion gab es erst zwei Siege.
PERSONAL: Die Hanseaten können wieder auf Hee-Chan Hwang bauen. Der koreanische Offensivspieler musste zuletzt wegen muskulärer Probleme pausieren. Am Sonntag trainierte der 22-Jährige wieder voll. Offen ist noch der Einsatz von Defensivakteur Vasilije Janjicic wegen eines Infekts. Im Pokalspiel gegen Schalke 04 ließ Kölns Trainer Markus Anfang Zweitliga-Toptorjäger Simon Terodde draußen und gab Jhon Cordoba eine Chance. Dieser überzeugte nicht nur wegen seines Tors. Anfang denkt darüber nach, in Hamburg beide Angreifer nebeneinander stürmen zu lassen.
BESONDERHEITEN I: Für Hannes Wolf ist das Spiel gegen die Kölner die Heimpremiere als neuer HSV-Trainer. Mit einem Sieg könnte der Nachfolger des vor knapp zwei Wochen freigestellten Christian Titz die Diskussionen über den Sinn des Trainerwechsels vorerst beenden. Immerhin gelang ihm seit seinem Dienstbeginn ein Sieg beim 1. FC Magdeburg und der Erfolg im DFB-Pokal beim Drittligisten SV Wehen Wiesbaden.
BESONDERHEITEN II: Das Duell HSV gegen Köln ist auch ein Stück Bundesliga-Geschichte. 94 Mal standen sich beide Vereine in der 1. Liga gegenüber. Zusammengerechnet bestritten sie mehr als 3000 Bundesligspiele. Beide Clubs haben mit Abstand die höchsten Etats in der 2. Bundesliga (jeweils etwa 30 Millionen Euro), die wertvollsten Kader und die größten Traditionen.
PROTAGONISTEN: Das Duell HSV gegen Köln ist auch das Duell der Torjäger Terodde und Pierre-Michel Lasogga. Der FC-Angreifer ist mit 13 Treffern der bislang erfolgreichste Stürmer der 2. Liga. Lasogga ist der teuerste Spieler der 2. Bundesliga. Unter Titz war er vor allem Joker, kam dennoch auf fünf Treffer. Seit Wolf Cheftrainer bei den Hanseaten ist, gehört der 26-Jährige zum Stammpersonal und überzeugte in Magdeburg als Vorbereiter und in Wiesbaden als Vollstrecker.
DAS SAGEN DIE TRAINER:
Hannes Wolf (HSV): „Wir können viel gewinnen. Aber im Fall einer Niederlage würden wir nicht alles verlieren. Wir haben Respekt, aber wissen auch, dass wir es schaffen können. Das ist eine gute Kombination.”
Markus Anfang (Köln): „Das ist kein Duell wie jedes andere. Es wäre schöner, wenn es in der ersten Liga stattfinden würde.”
TORONTO — They say breaking up is hard to do — and that most often can be the case when it comes to leaving your realtor.
Although not overly common, there may come a time when you want to ditch the real estate agent you have entrusted to help you sell or buy a home.
However, if you have signed a contract to work with your agent, chances are you’re stuck with them, at least for awhile.
Realtor Andre Pasche says the top reason why a client may want to dump their listing agent before their contract ends is that they blame them for not being able to sell their property.
“You can find yourself at a standstill,” said Pasche, who is with Norman Hill Realty in Markham, Ont.
“The house isn’t selling, the real estate agent isn’t going to cancel the agreement, so nothing is going to happen. Basically everybody is wasting time because they’re mad at each other.”
Other reasons why a homeowner may become unhappy can include a realtor over-promising in their pitch, convincing the owner the home is worth more than market value or added services such as staging and marketing materials were not delivered to their standards.
Alternatively, homebuyers can become frustrated if they keep losing out on bids, or begin to not trust the expertise or advice given to them by their buying agent.
In these scenarios, there is little recourse for someone who wants to back out of a contract, says Pasche.
It can be hard to break up with your real estate agent.
Chad Hipolito/The Canadian Press
The first step an unhappy client should take is to express their concerns with their agent to see if they’d be willing to break the contract.
If that’s not possible, they can speak with the agent’s manager and ask to work with another salesperson in the company. Switching agents within the same brokerage does not contravene the original contract, which is usually signed with a brokerage, not an agent, for anywhere from 60 to 90 days.
Lastly, the homeowner can reach out and file a complaint with the regulating real estate body in their province, like the Real Estate Council of Ontario, which can often be laborious and time-consuming.
Pasche says the simplest way to stop working with an agent is to wait until the contract expires, pull the property off the market and relist it with a new realtor.
Listing agents are often reluctant to let clients break their contracts because they typically spend hundreds of dollars on staging the property, creating a website and hiring a professional photographer. Some realtors may agree to void the contract, but will insist on being reimbursed for these costs.
John Pasalis, president of Realosophy Realty, says his company always adds a special clause in their buyer and seller contracts that allow clients to leave at any time — even though it’s not standard industry practice.
“As you’re working with someone, and they give you the authority to represent them, if they’re not happy, then what is the point of locking in someone to work with them?” he asked. “To me, it only makes sense to let buyers move on if they’re not happy.”
Pasalis suggests homeowners and homebuyers should interview two or three realtors before committing. Ask yourself whether you trust them, trust their advice and experience, and the likelihood they could deliver on their promises.
The best way to ensure a content relationship is to hire someone based on a referral, he added.
Clients should also be wary before signing on the dotted line, and ask to see if the contract period could be negotiated.
Pasalis says potential homebuyers are usually not asked to commit with a realtor until the first offer is made. This contract could be added to the pile of papers clients need to sign for a bid, and before they know it, they’re locked in with a buying agent for six months to a year.
“Like all other things, you need to think about this stuff before you sign,” he said. “You don’t want think about the worst case scenario after you’re in that relationship. The first thing to do is be preventative. Have that discussion or add clauses in the contract that allow you to cancel.”
First in a three-part series on how Canada’s heavy regulatory burden is choking competitiveness.
Ask Jean-Francois Boursier about running a business under Canadian regulations and he will likely tell you a tale of two paint shops.
ADF Group Inc., where Boursier is chief financial officer, needed to build identical painting facilities on either side of the border: one at its steel fabricating plant in Terrebonne, Que., and the other in Great Falls, Mont.
The approval process for the Montana project kicked off in 2016 and it was authorized a year later. The Quebec shop was a different story.
“Between the time we started and the time we ended up with our final environmental permit was about two years,” Boursier said. “These are twin paint shops — the two of them, identical, built at roughly the same time. I’d say we paid between a half-million and a million dollars more in Quebec on a $9-million investment. That’s not counting the frustration.”
Much of the recent debate about Canada’s competitiveness has focused on whether Ottawa should chase U.S. corporate tax reductions by slashing its own rates. But Boursier’s tale illustrates a less often considered, but growing concern about their respective regulatory frameworks — the mass of government rules that protect the public when they’re working well, but unnecessarily hinder business development, supply chains and operations when they’re not.
“Canadian businesses have a very legitimate issue on tax competitiveness, but we don’t just compete on taxation right? We also compete via regulation,” said Craig Alexander, Deloitte Canada’s chief economist. “And in Canada, we have significant areas where regulation is impeding competitiveness.”
Fixing those regulations is a longstanding problem that some say assumed greater urgency after U.S. President Donald Trump introduced a package of measures he touted as “the most far-reaching regulatory reform in history.”
One of Trump’s first actions as president was to establish a “one in, two out” policy, ordering agencies to cut two regulations for every new one introduced, and to offset the cost of that new regulation. The U.S. also created reform task forces in all federal departments charged with evaluating existing rules and making recommendations regarding their repeal, replacement or modification.
The resulting cuts have saved US$23 billion in costs, according to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget.
Yet many of Trump’s regulatory rollbacks — particularly those that weaken protections for wildlife, air quality and groundwater supplies — have raised grave concerns about the long-term impact on the public.
U.S. President Donald Trump has made regulatory reform a priority.
Al Drago/Bloomberg
“If Trump’s regulations are harmful to the public interest, it might not be the case that you want to match them, because they aren’t necessarily where Canada wants to go,” said Alexander, who points to the 2008 financial crisis as a “great example” of where weak U.S. regulations contributed to a major economic catastrophe.
“But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things we should be trying to do, because when you take all the different sources and put them together, you get a picture that says Canada is facing a real challenge on regulatory competitiveness,” he said.
Indeed, Canada this week fell four spots to No. 22 on the World Bank’s latest Ease of Doing Business Index, which measures the impact of regulations in 190 economies in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Dig a little deeper and the drag becomes clear: Canada compares well in terms of access to credit and the ease of starting a business, but its performance takes a steep decline to No. 63 in terms of “dealing with construction permits” and No. 50 in “trading across borders.”
Similar concerns surface in the World Economic Forum’s 2018 global competitiveness index. Despite an overall 12th place ranking on favourable views of Canada’s labour market and macroeconomic stability, the country plunges to No. 53 when it comes to the “burden of government regulation,” down from No. 38 the year before.
Canada is facing a real challenge on regulatory competitiveness
One of the key challenges in reshaping Canada’s regulatory regime stems from the way rule-making powers have been distributed between federal and provincial governments.
Unlike the U.S., where more power is held at the federal level, Canada’s status as a federation means regulatory control is spread between Ottawa and the provinces. That dynamic makes Canada’s key regulatory challenges — including the removal of inter-provincial trade barriers — and the remedies required to fix them particularly tricky, analysts say.
Decades of provincial rule-making have created a “tyranny of small variances” in regulations that affect trucking standards, food packaging and labelling, trade in beer and wine, and securities regulation, according to a May report by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
For trucking companies, Canada’s cross-country patchwork of rules governing permissible weights, speed limitations and driver hours complicates operations and denies companies a level playing field, said David Carruth, chief executive of Milton, Ont.-based One for Freight and incoming chair of the Ontario Trucking Association.
Trucking companies face a cross-country patchwork of rules.
Mike Hensen/The London Free Press/Postmedia Network
For example, rules regarding the number of hours a driver can stay on the road without stopping to rest differ between Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan, he said. Furthermore, Ontario and Quebec require licensed trucks to have “mandatory speed limiters” — devices that restrict speeds to 105 km/hr — while other provinces do not.
“Mandatory speed limiters are safer, better for fuel consumption, better for carbon emissions,” Carruth said. “But we’re competing with carriers in other parts of the country and in the U.S. who don’t have speed limiters on their trucks. There’s a lot of good rules there, but we need a national standard.”
Scrapping or streamlining such differences could be a game changer for the economy since internal trade accounts for almost a fifth — or $370 billion — of Canada’s annual GDP.
Removing barriers could boost annual output up to two-tenths of a percentage point, according to Bank of Canada estimates — about as much as is expected to result from the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
A “harmonize or justify approach,” in which provinces must explain why their standards need to be different, is one way to “hold feet to the fire” and address issues of regulatory duplication and overlap, said Grant Bishop, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute.
Harmonization between our provinces on regulatory standards is the real way to unleash Canadian competitiveness
Grant Bishop, associate director of research at the C.D. Howe Institute
“Harmonization between our provinces on regulatory standards is the real way to unleash Canadian competitiveness, with the federal government ideally playing a supportive, but assertive role to bring that competition together,” he said.
Governments and businesses broadly agree on the need to ease the regulatory burden, particularly at a time when rising trade barriers are creating new challenges for businesses.
The federal government announced a “one for one” regulatory rule in 2015 — in which one rule must be removed for every new one introduced — and will hold a first ministers meeting in late November or early December that will focus on easing internal trade barriers.
Federal, provincial and municipal governments also ratified the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) last year in an attempt to resolve inter-provincial differences, though analysts and business groups say progress has been slow.
Navdeep Bains, left, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, and provincial ministers release the completed Canadian Free Trade Agreement in Toronto on April 7, 2017.
Peter J. Thompson/National Post files
“Without strong top-down leadership pressure, we remain skeptical that officials and regulators will on their own through this agreement achieve significant action,” said Ryan Greer, lead analyst on regulatory issues at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
“It’ll take a lot of pressure from the provinces and the prime minister to take advantage of this new tool and show the business community that things will be different this time. We think it’s positive it’s happening, but what matters is what comes after.”
Getting Canada’s regulatory house in order would add a degree of clarity for domestic businesses as well as for international investors, who are already grappling with foreign investment rules that have been a “great point of uncertainty for competitors entering the Canadian marketplace,” Bishop said.
For instance, Canada imposes unusually strict ownership restrictions on sectors such as telecommunications and banking compared to international standards, according to an OECD survey. The Investment Canada Act is also unusual among countries in that it requires foreign investors to show a “net benefit” to the country when buying a domestic company.
Various incidents this year — including the decision to halt the purchase of Aecon Group Inc. by a Chinese state-owned entity and the upheaval surrounding the Trans Mountain pipeline — have led to calls for more transparency on foreign direct investment rules and the government’s duty to consult Indigenous peoples.
The Aecon Group logo on a worker’s hardhat at a construction site in Toronto.
Cole Burston/Bloomberg files
“Instead of having companies prove a net benefit, I’d like to have a world where government has to show net harm to the economy,” Alexander said, noting that clear policies on investments by state-owned enterprises are also required. “If we could clear up that, we might actually make it more attractive for companies to look at Canada and say, ‘Boy, that’s a place I’d like to invest.’”
Organizations such as the Canadian Chamber of Commerce point to international examples for inspiration on how to turn things around.
For example, Denmark’s Business Forum for Better Regulation — a group of industry, labour and professional organizations assembled in 2012 — is charged with suggesting rule changes that the government must either accept or give reasons for refusing.
Instead of having companies prove a net benefit, I’d like to have a world where government has to show net harm to the economy
Craig Alexander
By 2016, the Danish government had adopted 308 recommendations, either fully or partially, for savings of $168 million, according to an OECD report.
Others say reforming regulations begins with the fundamental task of improving the collection of data necessary to identify cases of regulatory overlap and duplication.
Introduced in 2014, the federal government’s Administrative Burden Baseline (ABB) requires governments to establish a count of the number of regulations imposed on business.
But the number of regulations is only part of the picture for Canadian businesses. The ABB does not provide information on the intensity of those burdens or how they correlate to rules issued at other levels of government, analysts say.
“If you can’t measure it, you can’t reduce it,” Greer said. “There’s no magic bullet, of course, but any political effort to reduce regulatory burden has to start with a measure of what’s actually there. Otherwise, that cumulative burden just builds up.”
Canada Goose Holdings Inc. is slowly expanding beyond its parka roots, entering the footwear realm on Thursday with a $32.5 million acquisition that comes as it continues to grow its roster of flagship stores around the world.
The deal to acquire Baffin Inc., which will see the Ontario-based winter-boot maker continue to operate as a standalone entity, is part of a transition that CEO Dani Reiss says has seen the company — which found international renown with its extravagantly priced, Arctic-proof parkas — morph into a full-fledged “three-season lifestyle brand.”
“Lots of companies that have a little bit of brand velocity just start making all kinds of stuff and throwing their logos on it,” Reiss said. “Personally, I believe that’s the way to ruin a brand. We don’t do that…. We make best-in-class products and this is an opportunity to buy best-in-class technology and use it for our own footwear line.”
Footwear will eventually join a widening roster of offerings that already includes a number of lighter weight products, such as rain gear and knitwear.
That means, as the company eyes new locations for expansion, it won’t be confined to desperately cold places, Reiss said.
That expansion will take its next step on Friday, when Canada Goose opens a flagship store in temperate Vancouver, to be followed by others in Montreal and Beijing before the holiday shopping season begins in earnest.
The Beijing store comes after the opening of a Canada Goose flagship in Hong Kong last month, and the opening of a Shanghai regional office and a China e-commerce sales partnership through through the Alibaba Group. Since its wildly successful initial public offering last year, Canada Goose has been focused on its entrance into China while continuing to grow its retail stores.
“We’ve built this brand by doing things that other people aren’t doing,” Reiss said. “Now, in these times, more often than not, brands are closing stores … There’s this so-called retail apocalypse.
“To be able to be in a situation where we’re opening stores in this kind of landscape … that’s just another example of how, even as a larger company, we can continue to swim upstream.”
The push to open news stores started in 2016, with the goal of opening up to 20 locations by 2020 – a target Reiss said Canada Goose is on track to meet with stores currently in Toronto, New York, London, Chicago, Boston, Calgary, Tokyo and New Jersey. Next, Reiss said, he sees more “geographic opportunities” in the U.S. and Europe, as well as more in China and Canada. But he wouldn’t say where.
“If you had to guess the list, I think you’d probably do pretty well,” he said. “I won’t rule out hot climates. But we have a long list of cities that we’d like to be in and we want to do it very carefully and methodically.”
To be able to be in a situation where we’re opening stores in this kind of (retail) landscape … that’s just another example of how … we can continue to swim upstream
CEO Dani Reiss
But that kind of expansion can’t be without complications. Asked if there were challenges to growth in China, Reiss said “there’s a lot of bureaucracy in China that you have to be prepared to deal with.” The expansion could have also riled the giant department store chains that are his wholesale partners, upset with the prospect of competing with Canada Goose store in certain markets. But that didn’t happen, Reiss said.
“If you asked them, ‘Would you rather if Canada Goose opened a store or not?’ They’d say no. And that’s natural, right?” he said. “But not even! That’s not even true, entirely. Because, you know, flagship stores for global brands are common and really help elevate the brand both in global and local markets. So no, we really have experienced little pushback.”
Reiss, who two decades ago took over the family business his grandfather started in the 1950s, has become an ardent protector of the Canada Goose brand. To date, he said, he has inspected each location before signing the lease and visits each store on an annual basis.
“Depending on how many stores we have, one day I might not be able to do that,” he said. “But we’ll take that one day at a time, or one year at a time, or one month at a time or something like that.”
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