With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/950283
INSIDE ApRIL 2018 BCBusiness 71 Twisted Business ILLUSTRATION: KAgAN mcLEOD From fixing the price of baked goods to grander schemes for swindling the public, it always comes back to the dough by Steve Burgess Higher learnings ... Whistler's pod racer ... Rugby is in fashion ... Rocky Mountaineer man ... + more A P r I l 2 0 1 8 "I'm never afraid of a good argument. It's always a growth possibility. I'm amazed at how many stupid questions I get to ask in my life" –p.78 Off lıne E v E R Y b o D Y ' S TA l K I N ' WATERCoolER earlier this year, Loblaw Cos. Ltd. offered customers $25 gift cards as recompense for the grocery retailer's part in a price-fixing scandal. the product involved was bread. this is not corny slang referring to the thing at the heart of every price-fixing scandal, but the actual, sliced, sandwich necessity. Last november, Loblaws was named in a proposed $1.1-billion class action suit alleging the company conspired with Wal-Mart Canada Corp., Sobeys inc., Giant tiger Stores Ltd., and bread makers Canada Bread Co. and George Weston Ltd., among others, to fix the price of bread—to pump up the pumper- nickel, monetize the multi-grain, leverage the leaven, boost the bagels, plunder the Wonder. Consumers who lost dough are sour. even without the puns, this is just sad. Price-fixing isn't what it used to be. Whatever happened to plots like, say, cornering the market for silver? now, that was a scheme, back when schemers were schemers and had three names. in the 1970s, nelson Bunker hunt and W. herbert hunt attempted to create a silver monopoly and reap huge profits. the brothers hunt and their partners briefly managed to hoard 77 percent of global silver supplies before u.S. government regulators stepped in and ruined their plan. Curses, (silver) foiled again. they may have failed, but at least they dreamed and schemed big. Can't see the hunts or J.P. Morgan or daddy Warbucks wasting time trying to corner