Month: May 2019

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Alphabet Inc’s Google has suspended business with Huawei that requires the transfer of hardware, software and technical services except those publicly available via open source licensing, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, in a blow to the Chinese technology company that the U.S. government has sought to blacklist around the world.

Holders of current Huawei smartphones with Google apps, however, will continue to be able to use and download app updates provided by Google, a Google spokesperson said, confirming earlier reporting by Reuters.

“We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications,” the Google spokesperson said.

“For users of our services, Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices,” the spokesperson said, without giving further details.

 

The suspension could hobble Huawei’s smartphone business outside China as the tech giant will immediately lose access to updates to Google’s Android operating system. Future versions of Huawei smartphones that run on Android will also lose access to popular services, including the Google Play Store and Gmail and YouTube apps.

“Huawei will only be able to use the public version of Android and will not be able to get access to proprietary apps and services from Google,” the source said.

The Trump administration on Thursday added Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to a trade blacklist, immediately enacting restrictions that will make it extremely difficult for the company to do business with U.S. counterparts.

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On Friday, the U.S. Commerce Department said it was considering scaling back restrictions on Huawei to “prevent the interruption of existing network operations and equipment”. It was not immediately clear on Sunday whether Huawei’s access to mobile software would be affected.

The extent to which Huawei will be hurt by the U.S. government’s blacklist is not yet known as its global supply chain assesses the impact. Chip experts have questioned Huawei’s ability to continue to operate without help from the United States.

Details of the specific services affected by the suspension were still being discussed internally at Google, according to the source.Huawei attorneys are also studying the impact of the blacklist, a Huawei spokesman said on Friday.

Huawei was not immediately reachable for further comment.

Chipmakers including Intel Corp, Qualcomm Inc, Xilinx Inc and Broadcom Inc have told their employees they will not supply critical software and components to Huawei until further notice, Bloomberg reported https://bloom.bg/2VLT5QK late on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Intel, Qualcomm, Xilinx and Broadcom did not immediately respond to requests for comments on the Bloomberg report.

Representatives of the U.S. Commerce Department did not immediately comment.

Popular apps

Huawei will continue to have access to the version of the Android operating system available through the open source license, known as Android Open Source Project (AOSP), that is available for free to anyone who wishes to use it. There are about 2.5 billion active Android devices worldwide, according to Google.

However, Google will stop providing Huawei with access, technical support and collaboration involving its proprietary apps and services going forward, the source said.

Huawei has said it has spent the last few years preparing a contingency plan by developing its own technology in case it is blocked from using Android. Some of this technology is already being used in products sold in China, the company has said.

In an interview with Reuters in March, Eric Xu, rotating chairman of Huawei, struck a defiant note in anticipation of retaliatory actions by U.S. companies. “No matter what happens, the Android Community does not have any legal right to block any company from accessing its open-source license,” he said.

Popular Google apps such as Gmail, YouTube and the Chrome browser that are available through Google’s Play Store will disappear from future Huawei handsets as those services are not covered by the open source license and require a commercial agreement with Google.

But users of existing Huawei devices who have access to the Google Play Store will still be able to download app updates provided by Google. Apps such as Gmail are updated through the store, unlike operating system updates which are typically handled by phone manufacturers and telecoms carriers, which the blacklist could affect, the source said.

The impact is expected to be minimal in the Chinese market. Most Google mobile apps are banned in China, where alternatives are offered by domestic competitors such as Tencent and Baidu.

Defending China’s rights

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the ministry had noticed the report and would look into it and pay attention to developments.

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“At the same time, China supports Chinese companies to use legal weapons to defend their legitimate rights,” he added, but did not elaborate.

Huawei’s European business, its second-biggest market, could be hit as Huawei licenses these services from Google in Europe.

“Having those apps is critical for smartphone makers to stay competitive in regions like Europe,” said Geoff Blaber, vice president of research, CCS Insight.

(Reporting by Angela Moon; Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan in London, David Shepardson and Karen Freifeld in Washington, and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Clarence Fernandez)

MONTREAL — If policymakers want to help solve Canada’s housing affordability crisis, they should start by building rental housing near colleges and universities.

That’s the implication of a new study from CIBC, which estimates that Canada has a shortage of about 300,000 housing units because of the way it counts — or doesn’t count — students.

In Canada’s census, a student who lives away from home during the school year but returns to their parents’ home in summers is counted as living with their parents.

Watch: Empty Vancouver mansions make for sweet student crash pads. Story continues below.

 

That census data is used by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. (CMHC) to generate estimates of the demand for housing across the country, which are closely watched by the real estate industry.

As things stand, CMHC’s data shows a perfect balance between the number of new homes built and the number of new households formed in the country. Thus, developers aren’t building the housing needed to fill this demand because they simply don’t know it’s there.

“If we are undercounting young people, and most of them are renting, then we have to increase rental supply,” said Benjamin Tal, CIBC’s deputy chief economist and author of the report.

Tal told HuffPost Canada it’s “reasonable to assume” that urban centres with large universities would be most impacted by this.

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And the problem is growing in its impact on Canada. The percentage of Canadians who attend university has been rising steadily for decades, while at the same time Canadian schools have been attracting larger numbers of international students.

Tal notes that, among international students, the demand for housing is likely even more intense than among domestic students, because “most foreign students don’t have a parent’s house in Canada as a base.”

The 300,000 figure is a rough estimate, the CIBC economist admits. Lacking data on how many Canadian students live away from home during the year, Tal used U.S. data to fill in the blanks.

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He says policymakers need a new measure to calculate actual housing demand from students.

“First, we have to be aware of this, before we can do anything about it,” he said.

TORONTO — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says immigration is a significant reason why Canada’s technology sector has been thriving.

The prime minister was the first keynote speaker at a technology conference in Toronto.

This is the first time the event, called Collision, is being held in Canada and organizers are calling it North America’s fastest growing technology conference.

Watch: Homegrown firm designs slick workspaces for Canada’s tech darlings. Story continues below.

 

Trudeau stressed that Canada has become a major source of talent for tech all over the world and that it’s attracting entrepreneurs to start their business in the country.

He says immigration as well as the federal government investing in education and research has boosted the economy and allowed Canadian companies and startups to flourish.

Trudeau also spoke about the federal government’s recent announcement to create a digital charter that would combat hate speech, misinformation and election interference, saying the framework would focus on Canada working collaboratively with tech companies.

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May 15 (Reuters) – Restaurant Brands International Inc said on Wednesday it plans to expand the global presence of all three of its brands to more than 40,000 restaurants, from the current 26,000, over the next decade.

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The owner of Burger King, Tim Hortons and Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen is aiming to boost its businesses by deploying various initiatives that range from app-based ordering to loyalty programs for its customers.

Watch: Tim Hortons unveils new spill-resistant lids. Story continues below.

 

Restaurant Brands, which is scheduled to hold its investor day later in the day, expects its coffee, burger and chicken markets to grow between 5% and 6% per year over the next 5 years.

The company, which has been affected by slowing growth at its three iconic brands, had brought in the head of its Burger King unit, Jose Cil, as its chief executive officer earlier this year.

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Last month, the company reported a 0.6 percent drop in comparable sales at Tim Hortons for the quarter ended March 31, while same-store sales at Burger King grew 2.2 percent, less than 3.8 percent a year earlier.

(Reporting by Shradha Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shailesh Kuber)

Higher interest rates and a record-large debt burden are taking their toll on Canadians, with the number of households filing for insolvency hitting an eight-year high in the first quarter of this year.

There were 32,239 consumer insolvencies in the first quarter of 2019, according to the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada. That number that includes both bankruptcies and consumer proposals, an increasingly popular alternative to bankruptcy.

It’s the highest number of insolvencies since 2011, and marks a 6.1-per-cent increase from a year earlier, the largest such jump since 2009, when Canadians were dealing with the fallout from the global financial crisis.

And that statistic is likely just scratching the surface of the problem, said Grant Bazian, president of insolvency firm MNP Ltd.

Many households are in a “financial sweatbox” where they forgo basic necessities and contend with calls from debt collection agencies in order to avoid filing for insolvency, Bazian said.

“We know there are many Canadians experiencing this kind of financial distress,” he said in a statement. “This isn’t good news but it’s something that needs to be discussed so we can eliminate the stigma associated with asking for help and — if it is the best course of action — filing a proposal or bankruptcy.”

Watch: Tips for growing your savings on a low income. Story continues below.

Bazian cited research showing roughly half of Canadians don’t believe they would be able to cover their expenses if they came up just $200 short in a given month. Much of the pressure comes from debt payments, which are eating up a near-record share of Canadians’ incomes, at 14.9 per cent.

Household debt rose to yet another record high at the end of 2018, according to Statistics Canada, reaching $1.79 in debt for every dollar of disposable income.

Debt experts had been warning in recent months that the round of interest rate hikes the Bank of Canada began in 2017 would have an effect on consumer insolvencies in 2019 because rate hikes have a delayed effect on households’ finances.

With signs mounting that Canada’s economy has slowed down in recent months, the Bank of Canada has signalled that it has put any further interest rate hikes on hold.

But Bazian says that likely won’t change the direction things are headed in very much.

“It won’t make a huge difference for people who have been under the gun for some time now,” he told HuffPost Canada by phone.

Bazian says he sees many consumers living off the cash flow created by borrowing, who aren’t paying the down the debt principal. With household debt reaching yet another high at the end of last year, people are simply getting to a point where any negative hit to their finances can get them into trouble.

“It’s just that people have been carrying so much debt for so long,” he said.

Bazian adds he expects insolvencies to continue increasing this year, at least to some degree. Canadian consumer borrowing is in “a bit of a bubble, and it will burst regardless of interest rates,” he continued.

Canadians are under social pressure that is pushing them into debt, with 91 per cent of millennials admitting in a new survey that they have taken on debt to keep up with their friends.

According to the survey carried out by Qualtrics for Credit Karma, 45 per cent of millennials have taken on debt to cover the cost of vacations, and 36 per cent have borrowed to cover post-work dinner or drinks.

Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they keep their debt a secret.

“Those are bad credit habits,” said Monisha Sharma, head of business development at Credit Karma.”The first thing we would recommend is be honest about where you stand. Be open about what you can and can’t afford.”

Warning signs

If you have no savings and you are just managing from day to day, that’s a sign you could be headed for financial trouble, Sharma said.

Other signs of trouble include paying all your expenses on a credit card and not keeping track of expenditures, or paying off one card with another.

For those with trouble staying fiscally disciplined, Sharma recommends a pre-paid credit card that effectively limits how much you can spend.

“No one is saying you can’t go out and have fun. It’s about creating a realistic budget.”

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MONTREAL — The sudden escalation in the U.S.-China trade war could have serious consequences for Canada, according to economists at the Bank of Montreal.

In a client note this week, they predicted that, if all the tariffs the U.S. and China are threatening actually happen (which certainly seemed possible as of Tuesday afternoon), it would shave 0.8 percentage points off Canada’s economy.

That amount of economic activity supports about 150,000 jobs, BMO senior economist Sal Guatieri wrote in a report last week.

Watch: U.S., China raise tariffs in tit-for-tat. Story continues below.

Given that the Bank of Canada is predicting 1.2-per-cent economic growth this year, the trade war could shred two-thirds of Canada’s economic growth in 2019.

The U.S. itself would lose a full percentage point of GDP, equivalent to around 1.5 million jobs, Guatieri estimated. China would take the largest hit, with GDP down 1.7 per cent.

Canada would take an economic loss almost as large as the U.S. because of our reliance on trade with our partner to the south, Guatieri said.

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“The U.S. economy catches a cold, we get a fever,” he told HuffPost Canada by phone.

A large part of the damage to Canada would come from weaker commodity prices, because they tend to fall when the U.S. economy weakens, Guatieri added.

But because the Canadian dollar is linked to commodity prices, there’s a good chance the loonie would fall in that scenario. That would help make Canadian exports more competitive, helping the economy and offsetting some of the damage from the trade war.

In any case, the trade war would not be enough to send Canada, the U.S. or China into recession, Guatieri asserted.

Tit-for-tat tariff hikes

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday raised tariffs on US$200-billion-worth of goods entering the U.S. from China, to 25 per cent from 10 per cent.

Trump said the move was retaliation after China reportedly backed out of some legal reforms it had agreed to as part of trade talks with the U.S.

China shot back on Monday, announcing new duties on US$60-billion-worth of U.S. goods, starting June 1. The duties will range from 5 to 25 per cent.

The Trump administration responded to that on Monday night with a proposal to slap tariffs on another US$300-billion-worth of goods, which would put virtually all U.S. imports from China under tariffs.

‘A real people’s war’

Trump has long complained about the trade deficit the U.S. runs with China, arguing it is the result of unfair and sometimes illegal trade practices, as well as theft of technology.

For its part, Beijing ramped up the pressure on Washington this week, with Chinese state media running aggressive editorials criticizing Trump.

“The trade war in the U.S. is the creation of one person and one administration, but it affects that country’s entire population,” the state-run Global Times said in an editorial, as quoted at Business Insider.

“In China, the entire country and all its people are being threatened. For us, this is a real ‘people’s war.'”

CALGARY — Gasoline prices are expected to remain just below record highs all across Canada this summer except in Vancouver — where a perfect storm of factors will likely ensure motorists continue to set new all-time records at the pumps.

Fuel market analysts say average retail prices in Canada are within a penny or two of their year-ago levels, which were some of the highest on record for many markets.

“Vancouver certainly is (at historic highs) but the other major markets we’re looking at, such as Calgary, Toronto, Halifax, Montreal, they’re not exceeding historical levels, they’re basically at historic levels,” said Michael Ervin, senior vice-president at the Kent Group Ltd.

Watch: Gas prices in Canada set to rise. Story continues below.

The average price of gasoline in major Canadian markets last week was about $1.34 per litre, but it varied from around $1.23 in Calgary and Winnipeg to the high of $1.70 or more in Vancouver.

Gasoline prices rise every spring due to factors including the higher cost of making summer gasoline — which requires an extra four or five cents per litre for additives to prevent evaporation — and supply interruptions as refineries shut down for routine maintenance, the analysts said.

Prices have also risen in part due to the federal carbon tax on fuel that was applied to Saskatchewan, Ontario, New Brunswick and Manitoba on April 1.

Analyst Dan McTeague of GasBuddy.com said demand will support fuel prices this year, but other factors could cause predictions to change if oil prices are affected.

“Demand is really strong in the United States, it’s OK in Canada, but the signals are really going to depend on geopolitics and on whether or not the world finds itself in a trade war. All bets are off in that circumstance,” he said.

The rising prices in the Vancouver area have put pressure on B.C. Premier John Horgan who last week asked the B.C. Utilities Commission to consider investigating why prices have risen by more there than in the rest of the country.

The analysts say there’s no mystery — British Columbians are paying more because the province’s two small refineries don’t produce enough to supply the market so they rely on imports from Alberta on the Trans Mountain pipeline, which is full, and U.S. refineries in Washington, which have been hit with longer-than-expected spring outages.

McTeague said the cost of an average litre of gasoline in Vancouver breaks down to about 52 cents per litre for the oil, 33 cents for the U.S. refinery, four cents in wholesaler markup, about 12 cents in retailer margins, 52.5 cents in federal, provincial and municipal carbon taxes and 10 to 15 cents per litre due to B.C.’s low carbon fuel standard regulations.

The last item is a hidden cost that’s difficult to measure, he said. It establishes a minimum renewable content and carbon intensity level in fuel, while requiring credit trading if those targets aren’t reached.

Parkland Fuel Corp., which owns the 55,000-barrel-per-day capacity Burnaby, B.C., refinery, says it operated at a utilization rate of about 92 per cent in the first quarter of 2019 and that it started processing bio-fuels such as canola and tallow to help bump up its production of lower carbon intensity fuels.

Prices in Canada will be supported over the summer by higher prices in the United States, where domestic demand is expected to be robust and where fuel exports are on the rise, Ervin said.

Last week, the U.S. Energy Information Administration raised its forecast for nationwide average gasoline prices through September to US$2.92 a gallon, about seven cents more than last summer, partly due to higher margins for refining gasoline.

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Canada’s drivers emit the most carbon per kilometre driven in the world, and it’s due to our taste for SUVs and pickup trucks, according to research from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

An IEA study released earlier this spring found that the passenger vehicles on Canada’s roads emit 206 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre driven, higher than the second-place U.S., at 198 grams per kilometre, and about 50 per cent higher than many Western European countries.

Overall fuel efficiency in Canada improved from 2005 to 2013, then stagnated and started moving backwards around 2016, the IEA report stated, and it’s because of the mix of cars on Canada’s roads.

“In 2017, 61 per cent of new sales were SUV/pickup trucks, the highest share in the world and nearly double Canada’s market share in 2005,” the report said.

Watch: Why electric cars are more popular in one Quebec region. Story continues below.

Canadians have also been slow to adapt to hybrid and electric cars, with sales of hybrids 40 per cent below U.S. sales, relative to population, the IEA said. A GoCompare study released earlier this year found Canada is “among the worst-equipped countries” for electric cars, with among the lowest rates of EV charging stations.

The data highlight the challenges Canada faces as it strives to meet its carbon-reduction commitments under the Paris Accord.

The federal Liberals this year introduced a carbon tax in the four provinces that had not set up their own carbon pricing regimes: Manitoba, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

The tax adds 4.4 cents per litre to the cost of gas, rising to 11.1 cents per litre by 2022. Taxpayers in those four provinces are eligible for a carbon tax rebate, which for many households will be as large or larger than the cost of the carbon tax.

The federal Liberals also introduced a new electric vehicle rebate of up to $5,000 on models up to $55,000 in price. Similar rebates in British Columbia, California and elsewhere have been credited with boosting electric car sales.

This year, nearly a million Australian homeowners are facing a nasty reality: Their monthly mortgage payments are spiking, overnight, by an average of $400 per month.

It was the latest dump-truck delivery of salt into the open wound that is the Australian housing market, now in a historic slump thanks to unaffordably high prices and the disappearance of foreign buyers.

While that might sound familiar to Canadians, this latest shock to Australia’s housing market was brought about by something Canadians largely aren’t familiar with: Interest-only mortgages. It’s a type of loan that’s popular Down Under, in the U.K. and elsewhere, where borrowers pay only the interest on their mortgage for some set period of time, commonly four or five years.

Watch: Empty Vancouver mansions make for sweet student crash pads. Story continues below.

That’s right, you make mortgage payments, but the principal you owe doesn’t come down at all. The upshot for borrowers is that, in those first years of the mortgage, they make far smaller monthly payments than they would with a traditional mortgage.

But then, of course, comes the day when the interest-only period expires, and your payments jump to include repayment of principal. That’s what’s happening to 900,000 Aussie households this year. The government in Canberra estimates that, at current interest rates, Aussies with interest-only loans will pay nearly $100,000 in additional interest payments on a $750,000 house, in the long run.

If that sounds like a risky proposition to you, you’re right. Back in 2002, U.S. lenders created something similar to an interest-only mortgage, a 30-year “adjustable rate mortgage” that gave homebuyers a very low “introductory rate” for the first five years, followed by a hefty spike in the rate, and with it, much larger monthly payments.

Five years after those ARMs were introduced, mortgage payments soared, helping to trigger the U.S.’s financial crisis. All of this is neatly explained in the 2015 movie, “The Big Short.”

Interest-only mortgages disappeared from Canada’s prime mortgage market in 2010, in the wake of the U.S.’s debacle. But now they’re back, with mortgage company Merix Financial becoming the first Canadian lender to reintroduce the product last year, a 30-year “interest-only flex mortgage.”

Does that sound like a good idea? To Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz, it might. He gave a speech last week in which he urged Canada’s financial sector to create new mortgage products as a way of reducing the risk from high household debt.

In essence, his argument was that more different types of mortgages would spread out the risk of a debt crisis. If everyone has the same type of mortgage, everyone is susceptible to the same risks, so if something goes wrong. everyone’s up the same creek without a paddle. More varied mortgages would mean any negative scenario would affect fewer people.

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But should interest-only loans be part of the solution? Robert McLister, founder of mortgage site RateSpy.com, says they wouldn’t pose the type of risk in Canada that they do in some other places, in part because the mortgage “stress test” applies to them, limiting how much people can borrow.

“Interest-only mortgages are generally harder to qualify for,” McLister said in an email to HuffPost Canada. “Unlike the irresponsible U.S. variety, pre-housing crash, Canadian (interest-only mortgages) do not increase your buying power.”

For that reason, McLister believes “they’ll never be mainstream in Canada.”

Few borrowers would benefit

Interest-only loans make sense for only a small fraction of homebuyers, McLister says. For instance, if you’re a small business owner who needs cash to get their company running, it may make sense to lower your mortgage payments and put the difference into your business.

“In limited cases, they’re also sometimes suited to people with temporary cash flow concerns — families going on maternity leave, people with irregular or seasonal income, etc. But these applications make me a bit more nervous,” he wrote.

Securitized mortgages: another blast from the past

In his speech, Poloz also suggested that Canada expand the “securitization” of mortgages. This means lenders bundling the mortgages on their books into a single “security,” then selling it to investors who collect the income from mortgage payments. This process is invisible to borrowers, who keep paying the bank every month.

This would give lenders new sources of funding that would reduce costs to borrowers — meaning lower interest rates on mortgages. But guess what? This idea also helped crash the U.S. economy a decade ago.

When those ARM payments shot up in 2007, it turned out that a lot of those “securitized” mortgage bundles were not worth anywhere near what investors paid for them. The borrowers couldn’t afford to make those mortgage payments, so there was no revenue stream. The mortgage bundles turned out to be essentially worthless little pieces of paper. That was a major trigger of the financial crisis.

For that reason, Poloz is urging “transparency” in mortgage bundling, which already goes on in Canada to a limited extent, backed by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. He wants to set up “a public database of mortgages used in securitization,” where a borrower’s identity would be kept secret but details of their financial circumstances would be available.

As the debt crisis unfolded a decade ago, many experts noted that Canada remained relatively unscathed. They credited the country’s “boring” financial system, with its lack of exciting new ways to borrow, for keeping the economy afloat.

Poloz’s speech this week suggests he wants to change that.

“There are many other possible variations on mortgage design … that it makes me wonder why so little has happened in our mortgage market in my lifetime,” the Bank of Canada governor declared.

“To be clear, the system is not broken — it has served Canadians and financial institutions well. But we should not stop looking for improvements.”

Given recent history — what happened in the U.S. a decade ago, and what’s happening in Australia today — can you blame Canada’s lenders for largely sticking to the tried and true?

MONTREAL — Executives at SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. continue to ponder a Plan B that could see the company break up ahead of a potential criminal conviction.

David Taylor of Toronto-based Taylor Asset Management, a shareholder of SNC-Lavalin, said the embattled engineering and construction firm’s CEO and chief financial officer discussed spinning off assets — which could include U.K.-based WS Atkins — at a private luncheon hosted by TD Securities in Toronto.

“They mentioned spinning off,” Taylor said in an interview, referring to chief executive Neil Bruce and chief financial officer Sylvain Girard.

Watch: Liberals wouldn’t take hidden SNC-Lavalin money now, Trudeau says. Story continues below.

“They’ve got great assets within that are being punished and their good assets aren’t being valued properly. So they sort of hypothetically talked about crystallizing that value, and the only way you can really do that is to sell,” Taylor said.

The sitdown last Friday, first reported by the Globe and Mail, came a day after the company announced plans to wind down its operations in 15 countries and reported a $17-million loss in its latest quarter, precipitating a stock drop to new 10-year lows over the past few days.

The discussion floated an alternative to a possible plan that SNC-Lavalin laid out for federal prosecutors last fall where the company would split in two, move its offices to the United States within a year and eventually eliminate its Canadian workforce if it didn’t get a deal to avoid criminal prosecution.

Confidential documents, part of a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Canadian Press in March, described something called “Plan B” — what Montreal-based SNC might have to do if it can’t convince the government to grant a so-called remediation agreement to avoid criminal proceedings in a fraud and corruption case related to projects in Libya.

SNC-Lavalin said in an email that it “continues to evaluate all possible scenarios to create maximum value for company shareholders.”

“We have publicly made it clear for several months that the company has a fiduciary obligation to its shareholders and employees to have a Plan B in place, retaining the services of external legal and financial advisers to help develop different scenarios for consideration,” the company stated.

“That said, no decision has yet been made, so it is premature to comment further on the subject.”

SNC-Lavalin bought British engineering giant WS Atkins in 2017, which now has more than 10,000 employees in Britain.

SNC hopes to sell the bulk of its 16.77 per cent stake in Highway 407 to the OMERS pension plan, with a deal expected to close before the end of June.

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