Home Depot to Buy Roof-Supply Firm SRS for About $18.25 Billion
Home Depot Inc. said it would buy building-products distributor SRS Distribution Inc. for about $18.25 billion in a bid to bolster the company’s professional services business.
Latest Videos
The information you requested is not available at this time, please check back again soon.
Home Depot Inc. said it would buy building-products distributor SRS Distribution Inc. for about $18.25 billion in a bid to bolster the company’s professional services business.
Spending spree is a show of force as the company looks to retain cloud computing edge over Microsoft and Google.
China’s largest state owned bank posted scant gains in earnings for last year as margins weakened.
The European Central Bank will allow Greek banks to make their first shareholder payouts in over a decade as the country emerges from a painful post-crisis restructuring.
China’s protracted property downturn is eroding the balance sheets of the nation’s largest state banks as their bad loans creep up.
Apr 24, 2023
Bloomberg News
,Canadians are growing more optimistic as the outlook for real estate steadily improves and the economy grinds ahead with few signs of an imminent recession.
The Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index, a measure of sentiment based on weekly polling, rose to the highest level since June. The index was at 50.4 last week, the fifth straight increase. It began to rise sharply around the same time as the Bank of Canada officially paused interest rate hikes, in early March.
A Bloomberg Nanos score of 50 indicates that positive and negative views are about equal. The index’s lowest point in the past year was 42 in October.
The primary reason for the gains is a view that home prices have hit bottom: 75 per cent of respondents said they expect prices will either rise or stay the same in the next six months. That’s the highest proportion since last June, and the fastest 10-week increase in more than two years.
The poll reflects what’s happening in the market. The national benchmark price for a home climbed 0.2 per cent to $709,000 in March, the first monthly increase a year.
What’s more, the Bank of Canada made a conditional promise in January to hold its benchmark rate at 4.5 per cent if the economic outlook and inflation unwind in line with its forecasts. Concerns about the health of some U.S. regional banks have also changed the outlook for interest rates. And a dearth of housing supply has led analysts to suggest housing will perk up in the second half of 2023, a sentiment shared by the central bank in its latest monetary policy report.
Canadians are also growing more optimistic about their own job security and their own personal finances, compared with four weeks ago. Forecasts for economic growth in 2023 have been upgraded by the central bank and by most economists after the first quarter came in stronger than expected.
Every week, Nanos Research surveys 250 Canadians for their views on personal finances, job security, the economy and real estate prices. Bloomberg publishes four-week rolling averages of the 1,000 telephone responses.