Business and Finance

Robert Deluce is the president and chief executive officer of Porter Airlines. In our series on the financial habits of notable Canadians, Deluce told the Toronto Star’s Emily Mathieu what he learned working at his family’s hunting and fishing charter business, the significance of a 1956 Oldsmobile and why, when it comes to purchases and sales, almost everything is negotiable.s

How did your family influence your attitude toward money?

My family is very entrepreneurial, so I’ve always looked at finances from a business perspective. Whether as an individual or a household it’s important to understand your revenue streams and expenses, and to look for quality and value when making decisions about how to spend money wisely.

What is the best financial advice you ever received?

I’ve always had to earn my own money. Even though I was involved in a family business, there was no free ride for me or my eight siblings. My parents always made sure that we were compensated for the work we did. I appreciate the value of money because of this.

What lessons did you take away from your first job?

My parents started a hunting and fishing charter business in 1951 in Northern Ontario called White River Air Services. I later boarded as a student at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto and worked at the family business when I went home during summer holidays. I would pump gas, load aircraft and do other odd jobs while learning the ropes as a teenager. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was my apprenticeship for running a business, and an airline in particular.

What was the first item you purchased with your own money?

The first item of any significance was the purchase of an old 1956 Oldsmobile from my grandfather for $500. This was in 1968 while I was attending McGill University.

What has been your savviest investment?

The purchase of a home in 1987 from an investment banker on the day after the stock market tumbled. After doing a really light “freshen up” renovation, which consisted primarily of interior paint, we resold the house six months later for about $400,000 more than we had paid for it.

What is your worst spending habit?

Like many people, my morning coffee is a habit that adds up. Of course, I have to have the premium drinks, which makes it worse.

How do you prefer to pay, cash, card or debit?

Credit card. It helps me keep track of expenses and I always pay the full balance every month. Cash is my back up. I never use debit cards.

What hard financial lessons have you learned?

Never leave yourself with only one supplier; you must have choice and some tension to ensure value.

What is your best money-saving advice?

Everything is negotiable. Rarely should you pay the sticker price for a product or service. You can get a better price simply by asking, comparing suppliers, buying in larger quantities or employing other strategies. Sometimes you can negotiate more value by having upgrades or bonus items included in the cost. If you’re somewhere, like in a grocery store, where this doesn’t usually apply, you can still save money by planning ahead and buying staple items when they’re on sale before you absolutely need them and have no choice but to pay the going rate that day. Never be in a hurry to conclude the transaction. And if you are buying a car, absolutely do not ask for a certain colour as your first item of discussion.

Are there any money saving tips you can pass on to travellers?

It’s important to know what you’re getting for your ticket when flying. You can usually choose from various fare types and each one gives you different benefits. Buying the lowest fare usually means you’ll have to pay extra to make changes later on, but you save upfront. A premium fare has things like this built into the upfront price. You should purchase according to your needs and be aware of fees if they’re required for baggage, seat selection, etc. We try to offer real value at Porter by including certain amenities that other airlines either don’t offer or make you pay for.

Do you worry about retirement?

I don’t plan on retiring anytime soon, but I do have a financial plan.

Are money and success the same thing?

I don’t think so. There are a lot of ways to make money, but success is something that you earn. Most successful people also have a sense of accomplishment. This may come from building a business or contributing to a cause where there is also benefit to others, not just you. Often this has nothing to do with making money or your total net worth.

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A judge on Monday used unusually harsh language to strike down a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the Securities and Exchange Commission over toxic mortgage securities, saying he couldn’t tell whether the deal was fair and criticizing regulators for hiding the details of the firm’s wrongdoing from the public.

U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff said the public has a right to know what happens in cases that touch on “the transparency of financial markets whose gyrations have so depressed our economy and debilitated our lives.” In such cases, the SEC has a responsibility to ensure that the truth emerges, he wrote.

Rakoff said he had spent hours trying to assess the settlement but concluded that he had not been given “any proven or admitted facts upon which to exercise even a modest degree of independent judgment.”

The SEC replied in a statement issued by enforcement director Robert Khuzami, saying the deal “reasonably reflects the scope of relief that would be obtained after a successful trial.”

The SEC had accused the bank of betting against a complex mortgage investment in 2007

Chicago was shaped in part by commodities exchanges where contracts representing corn, wheat and hogs have changed hands for more than a century.

But two prominent exchanges are threatening to leave the state if Illinois doesn’t change the way it taxes their trading.

State lawmakers are expected to convene Tuesday and to discuss a deal that would appease the CME Group Inc. and CBOE Holdings Inc., while meeting demands made by another Illinois mainstay, Sears.

Those who back the tax breaks say they’ll help keep jobs in a state whose unemployment rate hangs just above 10 percent payday advance lender.

Opponents say the state simply can’t afford to make such deals and question whether the companies would make good on their threats or whether they’re simply exploiting the state’s weak bargaining position.

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Libya’s transitional leaders have vowed to work with the International Criminal Court and with the United Nations in investigating alleged crimes committed by Moammar Gadhafi’s recently captured son and one-time heir apparent, the court’s prosecutor said Thursday.

ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told The Associated Press that the court received the formal pledge in a letter from National Transitional Council chairman Mustafa Abdul-Jalil. He gave the AP a copy of the letter in an English translation.

Moreno-Ocampo said he was satisfied with that move, which appears to settle a dispute between the international court and Libyan authorities over which body should try Seif al-Islam Gadhafi with crimes against humanity.

Libya is obliged by a UN Security Council resolution to work with the ICC, but that does not necessarily preclude a trial in Libya. If the court determines that the country has a functioning legal system that will give Seif al-Islam a fair trial on substantially the same charges as were filed before it, it can leave the case with Libya.

Moreno-Ocampo said the most important thing is for Seif al-Islam, whom he called the “face of the old regime,” to face justice.

It “is very important for the world and for Libya to understand what happened here, how they attacked these people, how they killed these people,” Moreno-Ocampo said.

The ICC has charged both Seif al-Islam and the Gadhafi-era intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senoussi with crimes against humanity for unleashing the brutal crackdown on an uprising that began in February and spiraled into a civil war.

Moreno-Ocampo said he understood that it’s “a matter of national pride” for Libya’s leaders to try Gadhafi’s son themselves because they want to prove to the world that they are capable of holding a fair trial payday lenders.

He said investigations are under way into the alleged crimes committed by Gadhafi’s son and that he believed it would be ready for trial “in a few months.”

In his letter to the court, Libya’s Abdul-Jalil pledged to “fully cooperate” with the ICC and the UN Security Council.

But he asserts that the Libyan judiciary has “primary responsibility” to try Seif al-Islam, the only Gadhafi family member in Libyan custody.

The letter is addressed to a presiding judge at the court in The Hague, Sanji Mmasenono Monageng.

Seif al-Islam is being held by fighters from the Libyan town of Zintan, who flew him there after his capture in southern Libya on Saturday. The International Committee of the Red Cross visited Seif al-Islam there on Tuesday and said he appeared to be in good health.

Officials with the governing National Transitional Council also had reported that former intelligence chief al-Senoussi, who also is wanted by France over the 1989 bombing of French airliner, was captured over the weekend in the southern city of Sabha and was being held in a secret location.

However, senior Libyan officials have cast doubt on the claim.

Moreno-Ocampo said Libyan authorities told him they could not confirm that al-Senoussi was really arrested.

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The press likes to cast itself as society’s guardian. On Monday, the judge leading the investigation into Britain’s deepening phone hacking scandal vowed to find an answer to the question: Who guards the guardians?

For years, the British media’s answer has been that it mainly looks after itself. But following explosive allegations of pervasive criminality at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World tabloid, Lord Justice Brian Leveson suggested it was time for a change.

“Guarding the guardians is not an optional add-on,” he said.

Britain’s phone hacking inquiry was set up by Prime Minister David Cameron shortly after the scandal boiled over in July, pulling the lid off illegal spying at the nation’s best-selling Sunday newspaper and exposing police corruption.

It’s one of several investigations spurred by public anger over unethical practices at the now defunct paper. The long-running scandal has threatened Murdoch’s global media empire, which includes the Wall Street Journal and dozens of other properties.

Parallel inquiries launched by police, prosecutors and parliamentarians have called Murdoch to Britain for dramatic testimony before lawmakers, led to more than a dozen arrests and the resignation of several top-ranking Murdoch executives, including News International CEO Rebekah Brooks and The Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton.

The first part of Leveson’s inquiry seeks to go beyond assigning blame to individual journalists or newspapers to evaluate the media’s wider role: Is the press above the law? Is it too close to police and politicians? Does society’s guardian need a powerful guardian of its own? These are some of the questions on his agenda.

Although the News of the World has few defenders, editors and broadcast bosses have publicly voiced concern that recommendations from any inquiry could leave Britain’s press less aggressive _ and less free. Few if any want more government regulation _ especially since Britain’s press already labors under strict libel laws and contentious new privacy rules.

While inquiry counsel Robert Jay said that the importance of a free press was “almost self-evident,” he warned that the media may not necessarily like the solutions the inquiry finds for tricky ethical issues.

“These solutions will not necessarily have been the solutions which the press themselves would have devised,” he said.

Leveson said he hoped to have the first part of his inquiry wrapped up by the end of 2012.

He’s expected to recommend either scrapping or radically reforming the Press Complaints Commission, the self-regulatory body whose failure to get to grips with the hacking scandal has been roundly criticized. The scope of his inquiry’s recommendations will hinge in part on whether illegal behavior is found to have been limited largely to the News of the World or whether it was practiced more widely.

There seemed to be plenty of evidence that shady practices were widespread at Monday’s hearing.

Jay told the inquiry _ whose proceedings were broadcast live over the Internet _ that it appeared that illegal interception of voicemails went beyond the News of the World. He said that the inquiry had seen the names of no fewer than 28 News International employees in the notes kept by Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator which the News of the World paid to illegally eavesdrop on its victims.

The words “The Sun” _ a possible reference to the News of the World’s sister-title _ also cropped up in Mulcaire’s notes, Jay said. So, too, did a name linked to the Daily Mirror, the Sun’s left-wing rival.

Jay said that the evidence on phone hacking pointed to what he described as “at the very least, a thriving cottage industry.”

The inquiry was briefly disrupted when David Sherborne, a lawyer for phone hacking victims, said that a Trojan, or data-stealing virus, had been found on his computer _ raising the possibly that he was being hacked.

The otherwise cool and clinical Leveson briefly seemed speechless.

“I’m not often thrown, but Mr. Sherborne has managed to do that,” he said. Sherborne later said the problem was being dealt with.

Sherborne was one of several dozen lawyers and journalists packed into a room at London’s neo-gothic Royal Courts of Justice, with more in a spillover tent pitched into a nearby courtyard.

A handful of members of the public came to watch the proceedings as well _ among them Bob Dowler, whose daughter Milly had her phone hacked by the News of the World at the height of the media frenzy over her disappearance in 2002.

Dowler’s case was the first to arouse broad public anger when it was reported by the Guardian newspaper in July, though several celebrities had earlier won settlements from News International. Among the people who will be legally represented at the hearings are “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling, singer Charlotte Church, actor Hugh Grant and actress Sienna Miller.

Katriona Ormiston, a 21-year-old journalism student, said she was there to see media history being made.

“Obviously it’s got quite a big impact on the future,” she said.

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U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk says leaders of Asia-Pacific economies will deliver meaningful steps to boost trade and growth at their annual summit this weekend.

Kirk ended a meeting of regional trade ministers Friday with praise for Japan’s plan to join efforts to forge a Pacific free trade bloc. He said leaders meeting in Hawaii intend to announce a broad outline for the plan.

He said the so-called Trans-Pacific Partnership would complement other efforts to promote freer trade and that other countries can join if they are willing to meet the very high standards required.

China’s trade minister, Chen Deming, said Beijing would seriously consider it if invited. Kirk said, “You should not wait for an invitation.”

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It sounded like a can’t-miss proposition: Buy the winners, drop the losers.

Developing countries from Brazil to China are expanding much faster than aging economies in the U.S. and Europe, where borrowing during the boom years has been a drag on growth. So the smart money bought stocks in emerging markets, expecting that rapid economic expansion there would provide better rewards. This year, that bet hasn’t worked out.

The broadest measure of U.S. stocks, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index, is down just 0.4 percent this year. Markets in Brazil, China and the like have lagged far behind, even though their economies are still growing faster than the U.S.

“If you were anywhere in the world other than in the S&P 500 this year, you got crushed,” said Greg Peterson, director of research at Ballentine Partners, an investment advisory firm.

The main reason emerging market stocks have suffered deeper losses isn’t because their economies are suddenly sluggish. Analysts say it’s because people have been worried about the European debt crisis and a possible recession in the U.S. It may seem unfair, but when fear of another financial crisis strikes money managers, they tend to flee emerging markets and stay closer to home.

This summer, panicked money managers dropped the most risky investments first. That meant bonds from deeply indebted countries like Italy and Portugal, small companies in the U.S and emerging market stocks got hit the hardest. Even gold, an asset normally considered safe, dropped as traders shifted money into dollars.

“There was a globalization of fear,” says Nathalie Wallace, a senior portfolio manager at Batterymarch Financial Management.

The same thing happened when the U.S. financial crisis hit in 2008. The S&P 500 fell 38.5 percent for the year. But the MSCI Emerging Market index, made up of countries where the banks didn’t peddle subprime mortgage bonds, plummeted 47.3 percent.

“Anytime you see risk and fear coming, you see emerging markets get hit a bit more,” Wallace says. “It doesn’t mean the underlying fundamentals of the economy have changed.”

Consider the collection of emerging-market rising stars known as the BRICs, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. All have economies whose growth exceeds the U.S.

_ Brazil: The economy has expanded 3.1 percent over the past year. The benchmark Bovespa has lost 15.3 percent.

_ Russia: Economic growth of 5.1 percent. The Micex has dropped 11.1 percent this year even after a 10 percent rebound in the past month.

_ India: Economic growth of 7.7 percent. The BSE Sensex index is down 14.4 percent.

_ China: Economic growth of 9.1 percent. The Shanghai Composite has slumped 10 percent this year.

By contrast, the U.S. economy has expanded 1.6 percent over the past 12 months. That’s sluggish compared to the developing world’s stars. And worries that the U.S. could slip into a recession, or that Europe’s debt crisis could tip it into one, have weighed on investors for months. Even after those fears dragged down stocks nearly 20 percent in a month, the S&P 500 outshines indexes in nearly all of the world’s fastest growing economies.

In fact, if you rank the U.S. against emerging markets this year, it places ahead of 20 countries and behind just one, Indonesia.

China and other emerging markets long relied on shipping toys, timber and other goods to consumers in the U.S. and Europe. Trade helped them grow. But that has a downside, says Tim Morris, a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan’s asset management unit. When a small country hitches its fortunes to U.S. shoppers, it’s bound to suffer when the U.S. economy slows down.

A related problem for many emerging market countries is that they’re dominated by energy and material producers, the type of companies most vulnerable to a global slowdown. Todd Henry, an emerging markets equity specialist at T. Rowe Price, points to Brazil, a country that isn’t as dependent on exports for growth. “It’s a relatively closed economy,” Henry says. “But commodity and energy companies make up a large part of their stock market. So if the world is slowing down, that gets priced in.”

The largest company in Brazil’s stock index is the oil giant Petrobras. When the U.S. economy looks weak, the price of oil falls and the companies that sell oil fall, too. That pushes down Petrobras, which tugs on the Bovespa. In other words, when the U.S. has the sniffles, Brazil’s stock market still catches a cold.

“Americans tend to think our problems are limited to the U.S.,” says Richard Bernstein, chief executive officer of Richard Bernstein Advisors LLC. “But our problems are their problems, too.”

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Europe failed to get the leaders of the world’s wealthiest economies to help out with its debt troubles, but everyone left a G-20 summit Friday relieved that at least they forced the Greek prime minister not to hold the world hostage with a bailout vote.

It took a public berating of Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, and Greece’s politics are in upheaval as a result, but the shaky bailout plan appears back on track for now.

Investors had been hoping the Group of 20 nations would lend the struggling eurozone a helping hand _ but the G-20 leaders said Europe needs to help itself first. They said the International Monetary Fund could be beefed up to help more, but not for at least three more months.

The debt crisis that rocked the 17-nation currency union for the past two years has reached a new high and now threatens to push the world economy into a second recession.

Despite the political firepower at the summit _ which included the leaders of Europe, China, Russia, Brazil, India and the United States, among others _ meeting was overshadowed by political turmoil in Greece and worries about Italy, which accepted IMF supervision of its reform efforts.

The IMF move was an highly unusual intervention into the affairs of one of the world’s leading economies.

Europe’s own rescue efforts, cobbled together at several crisis meetings last week, left open many important questions, making cash-rich countries like China, Russia or Brazil reluctant to commit more than just words.

“It’s important that the IMF sees its resources reinforced,” Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told reporters. However, any decisions on how to reinforce the IMF were left until February.

The lack of detail disappointed markets, with stocks, bonds and the euro falling. Italy’s borrowing rates, in particular, hit worrying new highs.

With their own finances already stretched from bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal _ and traditional allies like the United States wrestling with their own problems _ eurozone countries were looking to the IMF to use its financial reserves and rescue experience to help prevent the debt crisis from spreading to its larger economies, such as Italy and Spain.

The most likely way the eurozone could still get additional financing is through a special account under the auspices of the IMF, into which individual countries could make payments. Those investments in turn could then be used to boost the currency union’s own bailout fund, the euro440 billion ($606 billion) European Financial Stability Facility.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF chief Christine Lagarde both said that at the two-day meeting not a single country made a firm commitment that it would participate payday loans with no fax.

The broader increase of the IMF’s resources, which also remained vague, is designed to help countries around the world, not just the eurozone.

Barroso said several countries had indicated they would provide bilateral loans to the IMF _ which would give it more funds without collecting money from reluctant members like the U.S.

The G-20 final statement also said the IMF should somehow issue more special drawing rights, or SDRs, the fund’s own reserve currency that can be exchanged for cash with central banks around the world. SDRs can just be created and do not require new commitments from IMF member states.

Finance ministers will now have to work out the details of these measures. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the G-20 would next deal with the topic in February.

The lack of progress on the debt crisis troubled some countries that would be hard hit by another recession in the eurozone.

“Every day that the eurozone crisis continues, every day it isn’t resolved, is a day that has a chilling effect on the rest of the world economy,” said British Prime Minister David Cameron. “We are ready to do our part to help stabilize the world economy. … But you can’t ask the IMF or other countries to substitute for the action that needs to be taken within the eurozone itself.”

The G-20 announcements show how dramatically the powers have shifted within the IMF.

Until two years ago, the IMF _ dominated by the traditional powers in Europe and the U.S. _ mostly applied its painful financial adjustment programs to poor and emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Now, it’s growing powers like China, Brazil and South Africa that have to decide whether helping Europe is a worthy investment.

In an effort to do just that, Italy, the eurozone’s third largest economy with a debt load of 120 percent of gross domestic product, asked the IMF for help monitoring promised budgetary and structural reforms on a quarterly basis.

The country’s borrowing rates have risen sharply this week _ and jumped further on Friday _ on fears that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi does not have the political strength to implement the reforms.

Lagarde said the IMF hopes to start checking whether Italian measures promised to the eurozone are actually implemented by the end of November, to target “a lack of credibility.”

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Unemployment rates fell in about three-quarters of large U.S. cities in September, a sign that the nation’s modest job gains that month occurred across most of the country.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that unemployment rates fell in 280 large metro areas from August to September. They rose in 61 and were unchanged in 31. That’s the largest number of cities to see a decline since April.

Nationwide, employers added a net 103,000 jobs in September. And the unemployment rate was 9.1 percent for the third straight month. The job gains were only about enough to keep up with population growth. The economy needs to generate at least twice September’s total to reduce the unemployment rate.

Unlike national and state data, metro unemployment figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal changes. Many of the areas with the sharpest drops in unemployment were cities with large universities. They likely added jobs at the start of the academic year.

State College, Penn., home to Penn State University, reported the biggest drop in unemployment in September. Its rate fell to 5.1 percent from 6.5 percent in August. Grand Forks, N.D., site of the University of North Dakota, reported the next-largest drop, to 4.1 percent from 5 percent.

Meanwhile, many of the cities with the biggest increases in unemployment were coastal cities, where many summer employees likely lost jobs Business Card Holders.

Unemployment in Ocean City, N.J., rose to 9 percent in September, from 7.9 percent the previous month. The second-biggest rise was in Gulfport-Biloxi, Miss., on the Gulf of Mexico, where the rate jumped to 9.8 percent from 8.7 percent.

Other cities with big increases included Myrtle Beach, S.C., a popular beach resort, and Barnstable Town, Mass., part of the Cape Cod area.

Bismarck, N.D., registered the lowest unemployment rate at 2.5 percent. The next-lowest were Fargo, N.D., at 3.3 percent and Lincoln, Neb., at 3.5 percent.

Among cities with 1 million or more residents, Oklahoma City had the lowest rate, 5.5 percent. Oklahoma has benefited from its oil and gas production and high prices for grains and other agricultural communities.

El Centro, Calif., reported the highest rate, at 29.6 percent, followed by Yuma, Ariz., at 27 percent. They are adjacent counties with heavy farm economies and large contingents of migrant labor.

Las Vegas had the highest unemployment rate among cities with populations of 1 million or more: 13.6 percent.

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Two European Union leaders have called on the upcoming G-20 summit of wealthy and developing countries to build on EU plans to stabilize the debt-burdened eurozone and further boost the global recovery.

EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso wrote in a letter to G-20 leaders that there was “continued need for joint action” to get the world economy back on track.

A three-pronged deal reached last Thursday by the EU appears to have met expectations for some kind of major action, and stock markets rallied in Europe and around the world in response. The EU plan retools the eurozone’s underpowered bailout fund, calls on banks to take 50 percent losses on Greek bonds, and orders them to raise euro106 billion ($150 billion) in new capital by June.

The buoyant mood could be shortlived if G-20 leaders do not use their summit in Cannes, France, on Thursday and Friday to build on those achievements, the two leaders said in their letter payday loans online.

“Whilst we in Europe will play our part, this cannot alone ensure global recovery and rebalanced growth. There is a continued need for joint action by all G20 partners,” the letter, sent out on Saturday, said.

“More needs to be done at the global level. Many of the distortions underlying the large pre-crisis imbalances are still to be addressed,” the two warned.

U.S. President Barack Obama has already said the European plan to tackle the its debt crisis would have an impact on the U.S. economy, but stopped short of saying whether it would be enough to prevent another global recession.

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