The judge presiding over Rogers’ fight with the Competition Bureau over its takeover of Shaw is calling both parties to the carpet to see if there isn’t a way to breach the impasse stalling the deal. Chief Justice Paul Crampton has ordered legal counsel for the three parties to appear at a case management conference at 3 p.m. EDT, asking all sides to reflect on whether there’s a compromise to be made to satisfy competition concerns. Rogers has reached an agreement to sell Shaw’s Freedom Mobile unit to Quebecor for $2.85 billion to assuage concerns the $20 billion takeover will not materially reduce competition in Canada’s wireless market, but that hasn’t been enough to sway Competition Commissioner Matthew Boswell, who still opposes the deal.

IMPERIAL OIL DETAILS $1.5-BILLION BUYBACK

Another day, another Canadian energy company implementing plans to plow excess capital into shareholder-friendly measures rather than increase output. This time it’s Imperial Oil, with details on its plan to buy back $1.5 billion of its own stock, accounting for some 3.4 per cent of shares outstanding, previously announced in its earnings release last week. The company will conduct the buyback via a modified Dutch auction – basically, allowing shareholders to offer up their stock in a certain range, (in this case $72.50-$87 a pop) with the company buying at the cheap end of the range first. Worth noting that Exxon Mobil – Imperial’s largest shareholder, with about 69.6 per cent of the float – plans to tender shares, but only to keep its ownership at that same level.

FUTURES POINT TO HIGHER OPEN

North American equity market futures are pointing to a higher open after yesterday’s modest declines, as investors await the latest decision out of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Still, it appears traders find it unwise to try to front-run the Fed to any great degree – the U.S. dollar declined slightly, as did treasury yields. Jay Powell & Co. are widely expected to raise rates by another outsized 75 basis points tomorrow, but there are signs the central bank is nearing the end of its aggressive rate-hiking cycle.

CORPORATE CANADA WANTS GOVERNMENT WORKERS BACK IN OFFICE

Look, I’ll start this with a caveat – I’m not entirely certain private enterprise has a say in telling the feds to send workers back to office. That being said, some 32 business associations don’t care about my opinion, and have signed an open letter to Ottawa calling on the federal government to call everyone back as they implement their own return to office plans. The letter – headlined by the likes of the Business Council of Canada and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce – is calling on the feds to take the lead in RTO policies, arguing it will bolster the long-term viability of downtown businesses and restore normal activity among those businesses they represent.

OTHER NOTABLE STORIES

  • Sort of a mixed quarter from beer giant Molson Coors. Earnings per share missed, but net sales were up four per cent due to “positive net pricing” – ie, your beer has become pricier.
  • Shares of Uber have been up as much as 10 per cent in the premarket after the ride-hailing company reported higher revenue and net profit in its most recent quarter.
  • A consortium including affiliates of Fairfax Financial is global asset manager Atlas in a deal with an enterprise value of US$10.9 billion. Fairfax and its partners in the deal already own about 68 per cent of Atlas.
  • It was another earnings bonanza at BP, with the oil supermajor posting adjusted net income of US$8.2 billion, and announcing a further US$2.5 billion in share buybacks.

NOTABLE RELEASES/EVENTS

  • Notable data: S&P Global Canada Manufacturing PMI, ISM Manufacturing PMI, US Construction Spending
  • Notable earnings: High Liner Foods, Thomson Reuters, B2Gold, Dream Industrial REIT, Frontera Energy, Martinrea, Pfizer, Uber Technologies, Newmont, Eli Lilly, Mondelez Int’l, Western Union, Electronic Arts, Advanced Micro Devices, Chesapeake Energy, Airbnb