Last year, the Canadian government prohibited use of the TikTok app by public servants.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
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: You might not have heard, but the United States has a new president-elect. Former president Donald Trump defeated Vice-President Kamala Harris in Tuesday’s presidential election. Markets rallied after his decisive win, spurred by promises of reduced regulations and protectionist tariffs. In other American news, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point on Thursday as policymakers noted inflation continues to slide to the U.S. central bank’s 2-per-cent target. The bank’s rate-setting committee lowered the benchmark overnight interest rate to the range of 4.50 per cent to 4.75 per cent, as widely expected.
1U.S. stocks jumped this week after Donald Trump’s re-election. How much better did the benchmark S&P 500 index perform during Mr. Trump’s first term than under his predecessor Barack Obama?
a. Stocks gained 1.5 per cent more a year under Mr. Trump
b. Stocks gained 2.3 per cent more a year under Mr. Trump
c. Actually, stocks produced identical annualized returns under both presidents
d. Actually, stocks did better under Mr. Obama
c. Stocks produced identical annualized returns under both presidents. Maybe presidents aren’t as important as many investors think. The S&P 500 produced identical annualized returns – 16.3 per cent a year – under both Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, according to the Financial Times. (Returns measured from inauguration days.)
2Which company confirmed this week that it is moving its head office from Canada to New York?
a. Shopify
b. Brookfield Asset Management
c. Lightspeed Commerce
d. Lululemon
b. Brookfield Asset Management has officially moved its head office from Toronto to New York but intends to keep its Canadian incorporation and its listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange. The head office shuffle is part of the company’s plan to attract more investors by listing its shares on more stock exchanges.
3Which Canadian city has the quietest nightlife – at least judging by the percentage of the city’s bar and restaurant spending that happens at night?
a. Montreal
b. Toronto
c. Vancouver
d. Calgary
a. Montreal. Amazing but true: Figures published in September by point-of-sale company Square showed Montreal had a lower share of bar and restaurant spending at night than any other large Canadian city. Rising rents and creeping gentrification are at least partly to blame for the decline in the city’s fabled nightlife.
4BCE shares dropped 10 per cent on Monday after the company announced:
a. A change of chief executives
b. It was acquiring an internet provider in Europe
c. It was issuing a massive number of new shares
d. It was putting dividend hikes on hold
d. It was putting dividend hikes on hold. BCE shares plummeted after the company announced it was paying $5-billion for a U.S. internet provider and putting dividend hikes on hold to give its strained balance sheet a chance to recover.
5The professional order that oversees engineering in Quebec is weighing the conduct of former SNC-Lavalin chief executive Jacques Lamarre, including allegations he:
a. Bought a million-dollar sports car for former Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi
b. Threw a multimillion-dollar party to celebrate Mr. Gadhafi’s birthday
c. Promised to help Mr. Gadhafi resettle in Canada
d. Bought a yacht for Mr. Gadhafi’s son
d. Bought a yacht for Mr. Gadhafi’s son. Mr. Lamarre denies the allegations, which are part of a wider investigation into his conduct as chief of SNC-Lavalin, the scandal-plagued engineering company that has renamed itself AtkinsRéalis Group.
6Berkshire Hathaway, the flagship of famed investor Warren Buffett, has unloaded US$100-billion of which company’s stock this year?
a. Amazon
b. Alphabet
c. Apple
d. Nvidia
c. Apple. Berkshire continues to hold about US$70-billion in Apple stock, but has slashed its position from the end of last year, when its stake sat at around US$174-billion.
7What happened at a Toronto office of waste management company GFL Environmental this week?
a. A shooting
b. A hostage taking
c. A fire
d. A mysterious disease outbreak
a. A shooting. Police say 10 bullets were fired at the office overnight. The shooting occurred only weeks after the homes of two GFL executives were hit by bullets.
8Since 2016, there has been an interesting shift in Canadian life expectancy. The gap between how long Canadian men can expect to live and how long Canadian women can expect to live is:
a. Growing – that is, women are now outliving men by even longer
b. Shrinking – that is, women are no longer living that much longer compared to men
c. Reversing – that is, men are now living longer than women
d. Staying the same, but only because both sexes are dying younger
a. Women are now outliving men by even longer. The gap between the sexes was as wide as 7.1 years in 1982, but then narrowed to only 4.1 years by 2016. However, since 2016 the life-expectancy gap has started to grow again. Women now live 4.5 years longer on average than men.
9What did the Canadian government do to the popular TikTok app this week?
a. It banned use of the app
b. It ordered the app’s Chinese parent to shut its Canadian subsidiary
c. It ordered the company to contribute to a Canadian media fund
d. It demanded the company restrict usage among people under 16
b. It ordered the app’s Chinese parent to shut its Canadian subsidiary. Ottawa ordered ByteDance, the parent of TikTok, to shut its Canadian office because of national security risks, but Canadians can keep using the app. Last year, the government prohibited use of the app by public servants.
10Why did investigators raid Netflix offices in France and the Netherlands this week?
a. To seize files linking the streaming giant to French politicians
b. To probe allegations of unfair hiring practices
c. To stop broadcast of a controversial documentary about German politicians
d. To investigate possible tax fraud
d. To investigate possible tax fraud. French and Dutch investigators raided the Netflix offices to gather evidence as part of an initial investigation into tax fraud. Large tech companies offering services across borders have run into challenges from European authorities about how they allot revenue, expenses and profit by country.
11What did the Bank of England do this week?
a. It raised interest rates
b. It held interest rates steady
c. It cut interest rates
d. It issued a scathing denunciation of Donald Trump’s trade policy
c. It cut interest rates. It cut its key interest rate for only the second time since 2020, trimming it to 4.75 per cent from 5 per cent. Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said it was still too early to judge the impact of Mr. Trump’s election.
12Bank of Canada senior deputy governor Carolyn Rogers warned this week there is no free lunch when it comes to longer mortgages. By her calculations, how much extra in interest costs will a typical first-time home buyer pay if he or she spreads payments over 30 years instead of 25 years?
a. $25,000
b. $50,000
c. $75,000
d. $100,000
b. $50,000. Ms. Rogers calculated that, based on today’s interest rates and average mortgage size, a typical first-time home buyer would save about $200 a month by choosing to stretch his or her payments over 30 years instead of 25. However, the lower monthly payments would come at a cost. The buyer would wind up paying an extra $50,000 in interest costs over the life of the mortgage.
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