HEADLINES

Laurentian Bank of Canada Clears Path to Complete Split Sale to Fairstone Bank, National Bank of Canada

Laurentian Bank of Canada has cleared its final major regulatory hurdle to sell its retail banking arm to National Bank of Canada and merge its remaining commercial operations with alternative lender Fairstone Bank.

Laurentian has now set a closing date of Nov. 1 after receiving the approval from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization, which completes the regulatory review process.

In December, the company reached a deal to be broken up and sold to alternative lender Fairstone Bank and National Bank of Canada. As part of the deals, National Bank will absorb Laurentian's retail and small-business accounts by late 2026, while Fairstone will acquire all outstanding common shares of Laurentian for C$1.9 billion to create a larger specialized commercial lending business.

Bessent Rejects Notion of Symmetrical Trade War With Canada

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pushed back on the idea that the U.S. is in a symmetrical trade war with Canada, telling CNBC that Prime Minister Mark Carney is playing domestic politics rather than working toward a viable trade deal.

"I don't think you can be in a tit-for-tat with someone who's 13 times larger than you are," Bessent said in an interview with CNBC. Canada was offered the best trade deal of any country on the globe and Carney chose to walk away from it at the last minute, Bessent said.

"He's doing what is best for the Liberal Party, what's best for Mark Carney, and in the long run, the other Canadian people are going to see through that," he said.

Apotex Secures Full Ownership of Talicia in $53 Million Deal with RedHill BioPharma

Apotex Health is acquiring RedHill Biopharma's majority stake in Talicia, securing full ownership and global rights to the H. pylori treatment.

Talicia treats Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori, which is a bacteria that infects the lining of the stomach and is the main cause of gastric cancer and stomach ulcers.

For the 70% stake in Talicia, Canadian pharmaceutical and health company Apotex will pay RedHill $18 million in upfront cash, plus up to $35 million in potential milestone payments based on future worldwide sales.

Dye & Durham Names Todd Schulte as Interim CEO

Dye & Durham has handed the reins to Chief Operating Officer Todd Schulte while it searches for a permanent chief executive, and named director Angela Zhang as board chair.

Schulte was appointed interim CEO by the cloud-based software and technology company as it looks for stability in its top ranks.

A committee of directors chaired by co-founder Tyler Proud was set up in June to take on the duties and responsibilities of the office of the CEO following the sudden departure of George Tsivin. With Schulte's appointment, management responsibilities transfer to him and the committee has been dissolved.

Neo Performance Materials Partners With Carester to Drive Rare Earth Supply Chain

Neo Performance Materials is partnering with French rare earth technology company Carester to secure material for its European magnet operation.

The Toronto-based company said that it entered a binding term sheet with Carester to secure supplies of separated heavy rare earths to support production at Neo's European sintered magnet facility.

The deal will also provide Carester, which is building a recycling and heavy rare earth separation facility in France, with access to Neo's recyclable magnet waste and rare earth separation capacity.

Xanadu Quantum Technologies Outlines Path to Commercial Fault-Tolerant Quantum Computing

Quantum computing company Xanadu Quantum Technologies has laid out a new timeline to build commercial-grade quantum computers by the end of the decade.

The Toronto-based company, which focuses on photonic quantum computing, said that it plans to reach a key engineering milestone between 2028 and 2029 to build a fault-tolerant quantum computer.

Whereas rivals such as IBM and Google build quantum computers using superconducting electronic circuits, Xanadu instead has developed machines that run on photonics, or particles of light, to perform its operations rather than electrical signals.

TALKING POINT

Canadian Small Businesses to Bear Brunt of New U.S. Tariffs

By Amanda Coletta

TORONTO-Canadian honey producers are feeling the sting from President Trump's new tariffs. So are exporters of artwork, wool, cosmetics, flowers and hundreds of other goods that depend on the U.S. market.

The Canadian economy as a whole is projected to withstand the new tariffs of 50% on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods, or about 5% of Canada's U.S.-bound exports. But many small and medium-size Canadian business owners are expected to bear the brunt of the pain, and some fear they could be put out of business without a resolution to the trade spat.

"The impact is very grave," said Dan Kelly, head of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. "If your product is on that list, you're in panic mode right now, trying to sort out what you're going to do because this is not a small tariff."

In a CFIB survey released this month, 40% of exporters reported that they sold products targeted by the tariffs. Of them, nearly 80% said they expected revenue losses if the tariffs were imposed; more than one-third estimated revenue losses of at least 50%.

In the prairie province of Alberta, Lorne Prins fears the tariffs could send honey prices "into a free fall." Canada's agriculture department estimates that 56% of Canada's total honey exports by volume in 2025 were shipped to the U.S.

"The worst-case scenario is actually very ugly," said Prins, who co-founded the Gull Lake Honey Company in 2018 after a career in oil and gas.

Honey producers bought themselves some time by rushing exports to the U.S. after Trump first threatened the tariffs in July and before they went into effect. But producers are now in wait-and-see mode, Prins said.

"We might weather this season because a lot of honey has already moved," he said, "but if this drags out, it's going to be a disaster."

Since returning to the Oval Office, Trump has imposed several sets of tariffs on Canadian goods. They include duties imposed over unsubstantiated claims about an invasion of fentanyl into the U.S. from the northern border-which have been struck down by the Supreme Court-as well as levies of up to 50% on steel, aluminum, lumber and autos.

Previous rounds of U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods have exempted goods compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, but the new ones don't.

The tariff roller-coaster of the past year-and-a-half or so has weighed on Canada's economy. The country logged five consecutive quarters of decline in business investment, with executives unsure about moving forward with hiring and investment plans given the prospect of losing preferred access to the world's largest market and their largest trading partner.

Even if the levies don't plunge Canada's economy into a recession, they are expected to leave a mark.

Economists at Desjardins Group estimate that the unemployment rate could climb to 7% by year-end from 6.4% in July, if tariffs are kept in place on both sides of the border. Trevor Tombe, a University of Calgary economist, projects that the tariffs could cost 90,000 jobs.

Before the tariffs went into effect, there had been signs that the Canadian economy was starting to turn a corner.

Led in part by rebounding business investment, the economy grew at its fastest pace in more than three years in the second quarter. On Friday, Statistics Canada said the gross domestic product expanded at an annualized rate of 3.3% in the quarter. In July, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem had said companies were adapting to trade uncertainty.

"We were starting to believe that this was going to be a kickoff for investment to start to increase," said Dawn Desjardins, chief economist at Deloitte Canada. But now, "we are under this pall of uncertainty with how our trading relationship is really going to evolve with our still-largest trading partner."

The new levies predominantly target industries in Canada's three largest provinces-Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia-with producers of plastics, machinery, chemicals and forest products among the most exposed.

The Canadian government has announced more than $20 billion since last year to help firms and workers hit by tariffs.

It has also pledged retaliatory levies on U.S. goods to go into effect on Sept. 8. U.S. officials have suggested that they will respond to any Canadian retaliation, potentially setting the two sides on the path of a full-blown trade war. That would mean more widespread costs for consumers and businesses on both sides of the border.

Canadian businesses that were spared earlier U.S. tariffs are figuring out if, and how, to adapt.

Vojtech Vyhnak has put on hold plans to hire workers for his custom canvas printmaking business that he would normally be preparing to add now for the busy Christmas season. His Calgary, Alberta, company, Canvas Prints Ltd., has traditionally relied on the U.S. for half the artwork business's sales.

To ​reflect new U.S. tariffs on some wool it imports, Erin Pretty​ has raised some prices at Real Wool Shop, the clothing business she manages in Carleton, Ontario. She said some American customers have complained about the higher prices and online sales to the U.S. have dried up.

"I had to explain to [a customer] that it was her government putting the tariffs on products coming across," Pretty said.