Media

Paul Haavardsrud talks to CAMP Fellow, Rachel Wasserman about what private equity is and the buying spree the Canadian private equity industry has done in Canada over the last 15 years.

Dye & Durham Ltd. shares fell about 18%, the most in over a year, after Canada’s Competition Bureau obtained a court order to investigate alleged anti-competitive conduct at the legal and business software company.

A new report by the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project (CAMP) makes the point that, “Canadian farmers are price-takers trapped in the middle of a U-shaped power asymmetry between the companies from which they buy inputs from and the companies to whom they sell their products.”

The bureau for decades was an afterthought. Today it is emboldened, bolstered by a forceful leader, a bigger budget and, most of all, stricter new rules. The bureau grounded its Cineplex case in the recently overhauled Competition Act, which features consumer-friendly changes that aim to better protect Canadians.

The Lately podcast host, Vass Bednar speaks to someone who has brokered such private equity deals: Rachel Wasserman is a lawyer and former investment banker who left that world behind to become a researcher for the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. Her forthcoming paper is called The Private Equity Playbook: Understanding the Secretive Industry Hollowing Out the Canadian Economy.

Canada’s telecommunications regulator, the CRTC, is ordering Canada’s big three cellphone providers to lower international roaming fees. Keldon Bester of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project discusses what that means for consumers.