Monday, January 23, 2012

Prem Watsa

Prem Watsa: Meet the man behind the RIM shakeup

Published 48 minutes ago

Article

Lesley Ciarula Taylor Staff Reporter

Unorthodox, iconoclast and wildly successful. The man described as the catalyst for the RIM shakeup inspires superlatives and awe.
V. Prem Watsa, born in Hyderabad, India in 1950, will become an independent director at Research in Motion Inc. as chief executives Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis step aside.
RELATED: Read the latest on RIM
“The richest, savviest guy you’ve never heard of,” Toronto Life called him in a profile in 2009, a year after he defied the buoyant financial community and predicted the global financial meltdown.
Chairman and chief executive officer of Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd., Watson made another rarefied list in 2010: he didn’t take a bonus on his $600,000 annual salary.
Watsa, who lives in Toronto, is often called Canada’s Warren Buffett for his unexpected, unorthodox buying moves, predictions and choices. Unlike Buffett, though, he’s notoriously publicity shy. He seems to have been working behind the scenes during RIM’s revamp.
Fairfax has been buying RIM stock and is now among its largest shareholders.
Just this year, Watsa, 61, crafted the deal that saved Ireland’s banking sector while Fairfax was in the middle of a buying spree that included Sporting Life, Prime Restaurants (East Side Mario’s, Fionn MacCool’s, Bier Markt) , and William Ashley China.
“He was an educator, a school principal in India who valued learning and made sure his children got an education.”
His father had been orphaned as a boy but rose to become principal of the Hyderabad Public School, an elite private school compared to Upper Canada College, Toronto Life said.
Prem Watsa would attend that school, one of the few middle-class students.
Watsa earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1971 and his MBA from the University of Western Ontario after emigrating in 1972.
He chose the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western, he told Toronto Life, because it was near his brother, who had emigrated earlier.
Watsa and his wife, Nalini, have two daughters and a son, who is named Ben after 1930s value investor Ben Graham, a seminal business influence, Toronto Life said.
Buffett is also a value investor, described as a financial mind who defies the traditional economic belief that the markets are self-correcting.
That philosophy, Watsa has said, helped him predict the 1987 market crash, the 1990 Japanese collapse and the 2008 economic meltdown.
Just before the first Dow Jones collapse in 2008, Watsa had moved much of his company’s $16-billion portfolio out of the stock market and into treasury bonds and cash.
He has been chairman and CEO of Fairfax, an insurance and investment company, since January, 1985. He controls about half the voting rights of Fairfax, a business disclosure document said.
Fairfax was Canada’s most profitable corporation in 2008.
As well as CEO of Fairfax and director of ICICI Bank Ltd. in Mumbai, Watsa is chancellor of the University of Waterloo, taking over in 2009 from Lazaridis.
Watsa himself said at his university appointment that his father would be proud.
“Prem Watsa is a tremendous self-made leader who demonstrates integrity and reflects the qualities the university embraces and seeks to encourage among our students,” then Waterloo president David Johnston said. Johnston is now Canada’ governor-general.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

taxpayers footing most of the bill MPP pension

Wed Jan. 18 2012 11:19:45 AM | The Canadian Press

Taxpayers group suggests toned down pension plan

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Sun illuminates the Peace Tower as a visitor makes their way onto Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2010. (Adrian Wyld / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

OTTAWA — The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is again urging MPs to scrap their lucrative pension plan in favour of a more modest system.
The federation says MPs are beneficiaries of the best-funded plan in the world, with taxpayers footing most of the bill.
The group says it's time for MPs to set up a new program in which government matches their payments on a dollar-for-dollar basis.
Now, the federation says, taxpayers kick in $23.30 for every $1 an MP contributes.
And MPs only need to put in six years service to qualify and can start collecting at age 55.
The federation estimates it would cost $277 million to pension off the present House of Commons in 2015.
Gregory Thomas, the federation's federal director, said taxpayers pay more into MP pensions every year than they do into MP salaries.
He pointed out that the government wants to balance its books and is looking at the pay and pensions of the public service.
"There's no way the prime minister and these MPs can do what they need to do to balance the budget and control spending if they've got their own snouts in the pension trough," he said. "They need to lead by example. They need to put Canada ahead of their own personal bank balance."
Thomas said it's time for a much more modest pension plan for MPs.
"They should create an optional, dollar-for-dollar, matching defined-contribution pension plan, much like the new pooled registered pension plan they want all of us to adopt," he said. "If it's good enough for Canadians, it should be good enough for our MPs."

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Insurance Fraud

Back to 13 fake car crashes raked in $1.2M for criminal mastermind

13 fake car crashes raked in $1.2M for criminal mastermind

January 13, 2012
Kate Allen

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Mano Thirunavukkarasu pleaded guilty to 21 charges, including instructing a criminal organization, fraud, and criminal negligence causing bodily harm, related to 13 staged car collisions that occurred in 2007.

Kate Allen/Toronto Star

The ringleader of a criminal organization that faked over a dozen car crashes enriched himself to the tune of $1.2 million thanks to a series of dangerous collisions on public streets, a Toronto court heard Friday.
Uthayakanthan “Mano” Thirunavukkarasu controlled a string of body shops, towing companies, physiotherapy clinics and bank accounts to orchestrate the scam, according to an agreed statement of facts read aloud in court.
He also recruited participants in the crime ring — as many as 40 — and instructed them in staging the collisions, lying to police, and filing fraudulent insurance claims.
The participants were usually offered around $2,000, while Thirunavukkarasu pocketed tens of thousands, court heard. Over two years, Thirunavukkarasu cashed cheques valued at $1,216,000.
Earlier this week, Thirunavukkarasu pled guilty to 17 charges related to 13 separate crashes that occurred in 2007. The charges included instructing a criminal organization, conspiracy, and fraud.
The scam bilked over $1.5 million from insurance companies, court heard, without calculating the cost of needlessly tying up emergency services.
One participant, however, suffered catastrophic brain damage after a staged crash went wrong. In May 2007, an accomplice was instructed to drive a van carrying five passengers into the middle of an east-end intersection. Everyone was supposed to exit the van before it was rammed by a tow-truck driven by another accomplice.
But the tow truck collided with the vehicle before anyone had exited, sending several of the passengers to hospital by ambulance. One sustained permanent brain injuries.
That collision alone bilked $444,000 from insurance companies, at least $42,600 of which went to the crime ring. Eleven other collisions on public streets occurred after the botched crash.
All of the staged collisions followed the same general pattern, court heard.
Thirunavukkarasu or an accomplice would cruise salvage yards looking for vehicles that had been written off as scrap after a legitimate accident. A mechanic would issue fraudulent documents saying the vehicle had been repaired, and a member of the organization would register and insure it.
Participants were either paid or promised to be cleared of debts if they would drive the vehicle into another and then make fraudulent property damage and injury claims with insurance companies. A series of physiotherapy clinics controlled by the organization would bolster those injury claims.
Police became suspicious after noticing a crashed vehicle had been driven only one kilometre since the previous crash.
Thirunavukkarasu will return to court March 1 for sentencing.

Friday, January 13, 2012

cops in police brutality case

‘Rare’ guilty verdict for cops in police brutality case

Published On Wed Jan 26 2011

Richard Moore sits on the stoop in front of his Cabbagetown apartment, where he was beaten by Toronto police constables Edward Ing and John Cruz in April 2009. Ing and Cruz were found guilty of assault causing bodily harm in a Brampton court on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2011.

LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR

Peter Edwards Staff Reporter

Two Toronto Police constables have been found guilty of assault causing bodily harm, which legal observers say is extremely unusual.
“It’s very, very rare,” said Barry Swadron of Toronto, who has been a lawyer since 1963.
Swadron is the lawyer for Richard Moore, 60, who suffered fractured ribs and a gash to his scalp that required stitches back in 2009, after he was arrested for allegedly being drunk in public by Const. Edward Ing and Const. John Cruz in Cabbagetown.
Ing and Cruz were each found guilty on Tuesday of assault causing bodily harm by Justice Elliott Allen in a provincial courtroom in Brampton.
The outcome is notable because such accusations rarely hold up in court, said Paul Bailey, former president of the York Regional Police Association.
He estimated that 95 per cent of accusations of assault against on-duty police officers do not end in guilty verdicts.
“The vast majority of officers are either found not guilty or the charges are stayed or withdrawn,” said Bailey, a past administrator with the Police Association of Ontario.
The charges against the officers were laid by the Special Investigations Unit, a civilian police watchdog that investigates allegations of excessive use of force by police.
A Star investigation in the fall of 2010 found that it is very rare for charges to be laid against police officers at all, and even rarer for them to be convicted.
When the SIU has laid charges, the investigation found, one of every four officers sees the charges dropped before trial, many others are acquitted, or, as has happened at least 10 times, an officer is found guilty before a judge who spares him jail time. Some guilty police officers walk out of court with their record wiped clean.
Ing and Cruz were transferred Tuesday to administrative duties pending their court case. They will remain on administrative duty until they are sentenced; no date has been set.
They will not face the possibility of Police Act charges — which carry the threat of being kicked off the force — until all of their legal appeals are exhausted, said Toronto Police spokesperson Tony Vella.
Both officers declined to comment after hearing the verdict. Their lawyer, David Butt, said it’s far too early to talk about possible appeals, since the case is still before the courts for sentencing.
“It’s far too early to think of those issues,” Butt said.
The trouble started back on April 24, 2009, when the Ing and Cruz were questioning a drunken man on George St., near Gerrard E. and Jarvis Sts.
Cruz told court that Moore walked by and said: “You’re the rich man’s army. Why don’t you take on some real gangsters.”
Seconds later, Moore was running to the doorway of his nearby rooming house with the officers in pursuit.
While delivering his verdict, Justice Allen acknowledged that Moore was verbally abusive to the officers that night, but said that they didn’t have probable grounds to arrest him for being drunk in public.
Tests in hospital later revealed that Moore had no alcohol in his system. The charges of being drunk in public that he faced were later thrown out in court.
The judge also rejected the officers’ testimony that they were trying to protect Moore from wandering out into traffic on Gerrard St. E.
“His (Moore’s) injuries are consistent with being struck constantly,” Judge Allen said.
“The preponderance of evidence suggests he was making venomous remarks upon his arrest.”
Moore was not present in court for the verdict. Reached by telephone, he said he was surprised and gratified by the verdict but is still afraid to leave his home.
“I’m still scared of them (police),” Moore said. “I don’t go out at night. . . I don’t want to get caught out there.”
Moore that he has suffered persistent headaches since the beating. He suffered from migraines, hepatitis C, and a chronically bad back before the incident.
“I’m generally not in good health,” said Moore, a 5-foot-8, 160-lb former printer and ironworker. He said he hasn’t touched alcohol in a decade.
Calls to the SIU weren’t returned Tuesday.
Swadron said he doubts the charges would have been laid if he hadn’t written directly to Ian Scott, the SIU’s director.
Swadron, who is also pursuing a civil action against the officers and the force on Moore’s behalf, said he still hasn’t seen any use of force reports filled out by the officers regarding the beating.
He fears other assaults by police that go undetected because officers don’t fill out use of force reports and victims don’t complain to the SIU.
“It’s a definite gap in the system,” Swadron said. “There has to be some monitoring of persons who are injured. . . There should be someone from the SIU who monitors these things.”
Vella said no statistics immediately available on the number of Toronto Police officers facing assault charges were immediately available.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Plagiarism

By Sunny Freeman | 2012/01/10 13:24:00

Canadians getting better at paying off credit card debt: Equifax

By Sunny Freeman | Tue Jan 10 2012

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TORONTO—Canadians are paying off more of their credit card debt as they cope with a weaker economy and some restrictions on credit expansion.
The latest national credit trends report from Equifax Canada, released early Tuesday, says the average credit card debt fell in 2011 by 3.4 per cent.
Despite that improvement and a reduction in consumer bankruptcies last year, overall debt continues to rise — though much more slowly than before.
“The only product that has shown a reduction in balances over the course of 2011 are credit cards,” says Nadim Abdo, vice-president of consulting and analytical services for Equifax Canada.
“That in large part is due to changes in legislation and some restrictions placed on credit card issuers.”
As the economy slows and consumers become more nervous about the future, Canadians are curbing spending and paying down some debts.
It appears consumers may be heeding warnings from Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and others about the perils of taking on too much debt as household debt loads hit record highs last year.
The government has also clamped down on risky mortgage lending and other credit with new rules.
The Equifax report says the average outstanding balances for all credit products in the fourth quarter of 2011 rose about four per cent — half the rate for the same 2010 quarter.
Still, Canadians are deeply in debt and rising mortgage debt and other credit could strain household spending if interest rates rise or if the economy weakens further from the impact of a European recession.
The Equifax report found a “remarkable” improvement in consumer delinquencies, or non-payments, and bankruptcies in 2011 from record numbers in the prior two years.
The proportion of delinquencies is down to 1.4 per cent from 1.8 during the height of the recession, which amounts to a $1.9 billion difference. Consumer bankruptcies also dropped to what appear to be normal volumes prior to the recession.
Abdo said the decline in bankruptcies “appears to be a good news story for Canada, (but) there remains some concerns about the high level of debt Canadians carry on average.”
“The main concern is how the Canadian economy may react to stressed global markets while our GDP is projected to grow at a very marginal rate in 2012. Canadians are at record-high levels of indebtedness with little room to manoeuvre. If there is to be another financial crisis, we can expect losses from serious delinquencies and bankruptcies.”
Equifax provides credit data on consumers and businesses around the world.
Just as this data shows Canadians are beginning to clamp down on borrowing and debt repayments, a report released Monday suggests Americans are feeling confident enough to start borrowing.
Average Canadian debt loads surpassed those in the U.S. last year as consumers north of the border rebounded more quickly from the recession than their U.S. counterparts.
They began to take advantage of low interest rates sooner to take on more mortgage and consumer debt, which helped stabilize the Canadian housing market and domestic spending.
Statistics from the U.S. Federal Reserve showed consumer borrowing surged in November by $20.4 billion. It was the third straight increase and the largest monthly gain in a decade.
The jump in borrowing was largely because people took out more loans to buy cars and swiped their credit cards frequently to purchase holiday gifts.

Credit card debt falls in 2011

But Canadians still deeply in the red

The Canadian Press

Posted: Jan 10, 2012 11:27 AM ET

Last Updated: Jan 10, 2012 11:23 AM ET

Read 15 comments15

Average Canadian credit card debt fell in 2011 by 3.4 per cent, Equifax says. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press)

Canadians are paying off more of their credit card debt as they cope with a weaker economy and some restrictions on credit expansion.
The latest national credit trends report from Equifax Canada, released early Tuesday, says the average credit card debt fell in 2011 by 3.4 per cent.
Despite that improvement and a reduction in consumer bankruptcies last year, overall debt continues to rise — though much more slowly than before.
"The only product that has shown a reduction in balances over the course of 2011 are credit cards," says Nadim Abdo, vice-president of consulting and analytical services for Equifax Canada.
"That in large part is due to changes in legislation and some restrictions placed on credit card issuers."
As the economy slows and consumers become more nervous about the future, Canadians are curbing spending and paying down some debts.
It appears consumers may be heeding warnings from Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and others about the perils of taking on too much debt as household debt loads hit record highs last year.

Improvement in delinquencies 'remarkable'

The government has also clamped down on risky mortgage lending and other credit with new rules.
The Equifax report says the average outstanding balances for all credit products in the fourth quarter of 2011 rose about four per cent — half the rate for the same 2010 quarter.
Still, Canadians are deeply in debt and rising mortgage debt and other credit could strain household spending if interest rates rise or if the economy weakens further from the impact of a European recession.
The Equifax report found a "remarkable" improvement in consumer delinquencies, or non-payments, and bankruptcies in 2011 from record numbers in the prior two years.
The proportion of delinquencies is down to 1.4 per cent from 1.8 during the height of the recession, which amounts to a $1.9 billion difference.
Consumer bankruptcies also dropped to what appear to be normal volumes prior to the recession.

'Canadians are at record-high levels of indebtedness with little room to manoeuvre.'—Nadim Abdo, vice-president, Equifax Canada.

Abdo said the decline in bankruptcies "appears to be a good news story for Canada, (but) there remains some concerns about the high level of debt Canadians carry on average."
"The main concern is how the Canadian economy may react to stressed global markets while our GDP is projected to grow at a very marginal rate in 2012. Canadians are at record-high levels of indebtedness with little room to manoeuvre. If there is to be another financial crisis, we can expect losses from serious delinquencies and bankruptcies."
Equifax provides credit data on consumers and businesses around the world.
Just as this data shows Canadians are beginning to clamp down on borrowing and debt repayments, a report released Monday suggests Americans are feeling confident enough to start borrowing.
Average Canadian debt loads surpassed those in the U.S. last year as consumers north of the border rebounded more quickly from the recession than their U.S. counterparts.
They began to take advantage of low interest rates sooner to take on more mortgage and consumer debt, which helped stabilize the Canadian housing market and domestic spending.
Statistics from the U.S. Federal Reserve showed consumer borrowing surged in November by $20.4 billion. It was the third straight increase and the largest monthly gain in a decade.
The jump in borrowing was largely because people took out more loans to buy cars and swiped their credit cards frequently to purchase holiday gifts.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Here are the top five NHL stories of 2011:

Here are the top five NHL stories of 2011:

5. Three enforcers die

Derek Boogaard died accidentally after mixing alcohol and painkillers. Rick Rypien reportedly committed suicide. Wade Belak was found dead – some saying he committed suicide, some saying it was an accident. Their cases were different, and no one knows how fighting contributed to their deaths.

But there is ample anecdotal evidence that enforcers face unique mental and physical stressors, and Boston University researchers found Boogaard had a degenerative brain disease they believe is caused by repeated head trauma. Except for pledging to evaluate their existing assistance programs, the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association have done nothing while the fighting debate rages.
4. Crosby concussed
Crosby took two hits in five days in early January. At first, he was supposed to miss about a week with a mild concussion. But he missed about 10-1/2 months – unable to shake off symptoms, resorting to unconventional therapy. And though he made a dramatic return with two goals and two assists on Nov. 21, he lasted only eight games before he didn’t feel right and left the lineup again.
Crosby had separated himself from his peers before he was injured. He was the runaway leader for the Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player. But now he is like so many of his peers dealing with concussions – more careful in the short term, more fearful of the long term. Is this the new normal for Crosby, who, at 24, should have so much great hockey in front of him? Is this the new normal for the NHL?
3. Vancouver riots
The greatest season in Vancouver Canucks history ended in civic embarrassment. The Canucks dominated the NHL in 2010-11 and came within one victory of their first Stanley Cup. But after they lost Game 7 of the final … chaos. Burning cars. Broken glass. The enduring images are of young people in Canucks gear participating in the riot or posing in front of it.
The next morning, volunteers swept the streets, while the city began searching its soul. Why did this happen here – again? It had happened after the Canucks lost Game 7 of the ’94 final, too. Were these Canucks fans or anarchists? People studied photos and videos to identify the rioters. Can Vancouver hold public gatherings anymore?
2. Bruins win first Cup since ’72
The Boston Bruins went from chokers to champions. After an epic fail in the 2010 playoffs – blowing a 3-0 series lead to the Philadelphia Flyers, then a 3-0 lead in Game 7 – the Bruins became the first team to win three Game 7s in one year and won the Cup for the first time since the days of Orr.
Their backbone was Tim Thomas, a ninth-round pick and former journeyman who had off-season hip surgery. He reclaimed his starting job and the Vezina Trophy as the NHL’s best goaltender. Then he turned 37 on April 15 and claimed the Conn Smythe Trophy as the playoffs’ most valuable player, stopping the Canucks, the NHL’s top offensive team.
1. NHL returns to Winnipeg
For 11 seasons, the NHL tried a second time in Atlanta. But amid bad ownership, bad management and bad performances, somehow the game never caught on. The Thrashers couldn’t survive in the Deep South.
Waiting with open arms was Winnipeg and True North. The city had lost its beloved Jets to Phoenix in 1996, but now it had an ownership group and a new arena. It was ready for its own second chance. True North bought the Thrashers, moved them to Winnipeg and renamed them the Jets in response to a public outcry.

Winnipeg is the smallest market in the NHL. It has the smallest rink in the NHL. But season tickets sold out in minutes, and you never heard a roar like the one on Oct. 9 when Canada’s game returned to its heartland. The Jets lost their home opener, 5-1, but the fans gave them a standing ovation. At least for one night, a happy ending, a league redeemed.

TPS