Summer is the busiest season for me personally and professionally. I hope readers will excuse the slacking on the blog front. To make up for it, here is a ‘Walmart’ post offering a variety of updates on all the exciting things that have taken place in the world since the last time I posted.

On the Halifax front:

Local developer and Lebanese Honorary Consul, Mr. Wadih Fares, had a good couple of weeks. He was named ‘Businessman of the Year’ by the Canadian-Lebanese Chamber of Commerce, and his controversial 19-story condo building proposal was approved by city council in a historical 21-1 vote. Critics of the proposal involved the usual crew of Heritage advocates, with unbeatable arguments like ‘the building will throw a shadow that may touch a nearby heritage neighborhood’. The same critics are planning to show up en-mass to an upcoming public hearing for another waterfront development project, this one for the $30 Million complex proposed by Halkirk Properties as a restoration/redevelopment of the Alexander Keiths Brewery District.

Canadian News:

CBC lost the rights to the theme song of ‘Hocky Night in Canada’. CTV immediately swiped up the license and locked it in for infinity and beyond. The theme is considered Canada’s ‘second national anthem’. The news prompted this jab from Stephen Colbert.

International Business:

As of last week, Iran began pulling out their assets from EU banks to respond to the threat of additional sanctions. A new effort championed by the US seems to be on its way to convince EU member countries to increase their squeeze on Iran’s nuclear program. Before any potential asset freezing takes place, Iran is taking out their foreign exchange assets (reserves valued at $80 Billion USD) and converting it into gold and equities.

To the speculators out there: take note of the following three market reactions to the Iran asset-pull:

1. Gold will increase as a sudden increase of demand for bullion will hit the market through Iran’s bullion buyers
2. Oil prices will increase as the new potential sanctions may have an impact on supply out of Iran, the fourth largest oil producer in the world.
3. Look for investment opportunities in small banks who plan to continue dealing with Iran. Also look at banks in China, Middle East, former Soviet-bloc and other countries that remain friendly (or at least neutral) to Iran. These banks will be getting the windfall from the Iranian assets that will be pulled from European banks.

Technology:

Apple’s iPhone debuted in Japan in association with Softbank. The prospect of success for the iPhone in Japan was discussed in a previous post (click here for post). Meanwhile, Yahoo!’s board of directors is still in hot waters after they botched the Microsoft offer to buy them out. They went back to Microsoft begging for resumed negotiations, but were met with a firm ‘not interested anymore’. Quick to show SOMETHING to their investors and dodge a visit to the guillotine that Carl Icahn is setting up for the Yahoo! executive board, a deal was struck with rival Google to outsource a portion of Yahoo’s search advertising business for an estimated $250 to $450 million of additional annual revenue to Yahoo!.

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That’s it for now. I will try to post more often!