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: Amazon.com beat market estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday, thanks to growth in its cloud services unit driven by growing spending on AI. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud business, reported a 19-per-cent increase in sales to US$27.5-billion. The Seattle-based company said sales in its North America segment rose 9-per-cent overall to $95.5-billion in the third quarter. But it wasn’t the only firm that beat expectations this week! Meanwhile, what about Elon Musk? Did a judge say he was disappointed in the billionaire’s most recent scheme? Take our quiz to find out.
1Canadians aged 55 to 65 who own their own homes have a median household net worth of $1.2-million, according to Statistics Canada. How much do renters of the same age typically have?
a. About $1.5-million
b. About $1.2-million
c. About $600,000
d. Less than $50,000
d. Less than $50,000. Homeowners near retirement age have a net worth nearly 30 times greater on average than renters. The disparity reflects the huge run-up in home prices over the past two decades and underlines why so many people are desperate to get into the housing market.
2How can Canadian employers help relieve the stress on the country’s overburdened health system, according to the Canadian Medical Association?
a. By allowing people to work from home
b. By subsidizing health club memberships for employees
c. By not requiring sick notes for absences
d. By setting up mini-health clinics on their premises
c. By not requiring sick notes for absences. Writing sick notes takes up roughly a million hours of doctors’ time a year, the Canadian Medical Association estimates. It called on provinces to ban employers from demanding the notes.
3What is the “grate cheese robbery”?
a. The intentional mislabeling of 10,000 containers of a dairy by-product by a New York retailer
b. The theft of 22 metric tons of award-winning cheddar from a British cheesemaker
c. The dumping of 1,100 wheels of prime Parmesan cheese because of health concerns by Italian inspectors
d. The roughly $158-million in added costs that Canadian consumers were forced to pay during the pandemic because of grocers’ ability to hike prices on pasta-related staples such as grated cheese
b. The theft of 22 metric tons of award-winning cheddar from a British cheesemaker. A con artist stole nearly 1,000 wheels of cloth-wrapped artisanal cheddar from Neal’s Yard Dairy in England. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver called on his social-media followers to be on the lookout for “lorry loads of very posh cheese.”
4How did Jeff Bezos, the ultrarich founder of Amazon, manage to lose 200,000 subscribers to his Washington Post newspaper this week?
a. By insisting the paper endorse Donald Trump for president
b. By insisting the paper endorse Kamala Harris for president
c. By insisting the paper endorse no one
d. By insisting the paper endorse a third-party candidate
c. By insisting the paper endorse no one. Who’s afraid of Mr. Trump? Mr. Bezos said he decided to break with the Post’s long-standing history of endorsing presidential candidates because he wanted to dispel any claim the paper is biased. However, many readers – and many of the paper’s staff – were outraged by the sudden declaration of the Post’s new non-endorsement policy a week before a contentious election.
5Despite Mr. Bezos’s antics, the Washington Post published a fascinating report this week on a little-known chapter in Elon Musk’s early career. What does the paper accuse Mr. Musk, now a prominent Trump backer, of doing back in the 1990s?
a. Working illegally in the U.S.
b. Carrying a gun illegally
c. Marrying illegally
d. Attracting investors illegally
a. Working illegally in the United States. Mr. Musk has become a cheerleader for Mr. Trump and his claims that undocumented workers are destroying U.S. society. However, court records and company documents show Mr. Musk was working illegally in the United States when he launched his first company in the mid-1990s, according to the Post.
6Which financial powerhouse was revealed this week as the mystery bidder for a $7-billion stake in Rogers Communications’ cellphone infrastructure?
a. Brookfield
b. Blackstone
c. Apollo Global
d. KKR
b. Blackstone and Rogers have signed a non-binding agreement for Blackstone to buy a piece of the Rogers network that connects cellphone towers to the company’s core network.
7Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management agreed this week to invest US$2.3-billion in:
a. Wind farms off the coast of England
b. Nuclear power plants in Hungary
c. Solar power grids on a Greek mountain
d. Geothermal generators in Iceland
a. Wind farms off the coast of England. It is Brookfield’s first investment in offshore British wind power.
8Which was the only one of these iconic companies to beat analysts’ revenue expectations in recent days?
a. Eli Lilly
b. McDonald’s
c. Starbucks
d. Microsoft
d. Microsoft. This bull market is proving to have some sharp horns. Eli Lilly, McDonald’s and Starbucks have all disappointed investors in recent days. Microsoft, though, continues to power ahead. Bet against the Magnificent Seven at your peril!
9The Competition Bureau declared this week that pharmacists are being unfairly blocked from selling:
a. Travel insurance
b. Pet medications
c. Naturopathic remedies
d. Low-cost weight-loss drugs from Eastern Europe
b. Pet medications. The national competition watchdog said pharmacists are blocked from stocking pet medicines and called on provinces to take action to give shoppers more choice.
10Which European car maker reported a massive drop in profit this week and warned of possible plant closures?
a. BMW
b. Porsche
c. Volkswagen
d. Mercedes
c. Volkswagen. VW asked workers to take a 10-per-cent pay cut, as its profits slumped to a three-year low. Its struggles reflect slumping European car sales and growing competition from China.
11How did Canada’s economy perform in August, according to numbers published this week?
a. It grew at a healthy 2.8-per-cent annualized pace
b. It expanded at a moderate 1.2-per-cent annualized pace
c. It shrank
d. It flat-lined
d. It flat-lined. The lacklustre report adds to fears that the economy might have missed the Bank of Canada’s growth forecast for the third quarter.
How well did you do?
Answer all of the questions to see your result
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