Pay rises 13% for CEOs at Canada’s top 100 public companies

Posted: May 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Canada, Jobs, Salaries | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

In “Back in the green: CEO pay jumps 13 per cent“, Globe and Mail reports that CEOs at Canada’s top 100 public companies received average pay raises of 13% in 2010. This comes on the heels of dismal pay performance in 2009 and 2010 where pay was essentially flat. 2010’s pay hikes is similar to the double-digit pay gains Canada’s CEO typically experienced before the recession.

The article includes an interesting discussion of “performance share units” which calibrates performance-based pay to the company’s relative performance to its peers. This method prevents pay hikes from general market forces that the CEO does not control, like the rising price of oil.

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Vancouver Housing Keeps On Soaring

Posted: May 17, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: bidding wars, Canada, China, Housing | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

In “Homes: Chinese Buyers Make Vancouver Pricier Than NYC“, Bloomberg provides a startling and illuminating account of the dynamics in Vancouver’s over-heated real estate market. The statistics are absolutely astounding. Here is a sample:

“Sales of detached homes, townhouses and condominiums in metropolitan Vancouver jumped 70 percent in February from January, to 3,097 units from 1,819, and were up 25 percent from a year earlier, according to the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. In March, sales climbed 32 percent from February, to just shy of a record for the month of 4,371 transactions set in 2004. Sales increased by 80 percent from two years ago.”

“In 2010, Vancouver had the third-highest housing costs among English-speaking cities worldwide, according to Canada’s Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Only Hong Kong and Sydney, another magnet of Asian immigration, were more expensive. Vancouver’s median home price of C$602,000 ($618,000) was 9.5 times the annual median household income of C$63,100, the group said in a study released Jan. 24. Canada had a 4.6 national multiple, making it ‘seriously unaffordable,’ while the U.S. at 3.3 was ‘moderately unaffordable,’ the study showed. To be affordable, the multiple must be 3 or less.”

The rest of the article explains how buyers from China are helping to drive prices in Vancouver as they escape property restrictions back home. Given three waves of Chinese buyers have descended upon Vancouver since 1990, market participants must feel like everything is normal. As an outsider, this market seems to have all the classic markers of a bubble. As long as the money keeps flowing, the market will remain inflated…