The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 31

BEST COPY AVAILABLE BUSINESS. UN VAMDI VIIiM N. HII.Y. IL'NF 3. 201 C3 Great Canadian announces 5-for-2 stock split EQUITIES I Increasing the number of shares will Better odds Shares in Great Canadian Gaming Corp.

cut their price and make stock more liquid (TSX: GCD) will become more affordable WW following the announced split. The stock is up 79 per cent BY DERRICK PENNER VANCOUVER SUN June 2, 2005: $50.16 over this time last year. June 1, 2004: $28.00 executives of the company with the largest block, 25 per cent, owned by Ross McLeod. Great Canadian Gaming's founder, chairman and CEO. Stock analyst Sheila Broughton, with Pacific International Securities in Vancouver, said the split won't materially affect the company except to cut the price of its stock in relation to the increased number of shares available for trading.

Broughton added that increasing the number of shares available, and cutting their price, will make the stock more "liquid," or easily tradable by more people, which should make price moves in Great Canadian shares less volatile. Shares typically trade in board-lots of 100 shares and Broughton said broker fees are higher when investors trade in amounts less than boardlots. She added that the current $5,016 price for a Great Canadian board lot is a steep price for most retail investors. Broughton said a high price "makes it hard for someone to get into or out of a significant position in the stock." "This will just help an investor come into the story to buy a boardlot of shares." She added that Great Canadian shareholders had approved a split of up to three-to-one at its annual meeting a year ago, which will raise the question of whether the five-for-two split will be enough. "In the long term, how long is this going to be a $20 stock?" she said.

"This is a growing company." 33 cents on the day's trading. Great Canadian's shares will be posted for trading on a five-for-two basis at the opening of trading on June 9 with new shares to be issued to shareholders of record on June 13. That represents a price appreciation of 78 per cent from Great Canadian's share price of $28.20 a year ago. "By splitting he stock, it makes it more affordable for individual investors to participate," Thomas Bell, Great Canadian's vice-president of corporate development and investor relations, said in a telephone interview. Richmond-based Great Canadian Gaming is splitting its high-flying stock on a five-for-two basis, a move the company said should make owning a piece of Great Canadian more affordable for a wider base of shareholders.

The five-for-two split will give shareholders an additional three shares for every two shares that they currently own, which should reduce the stock price to about $20 per share, compared with its Thursday close of S50.16 Thursday's close was a gain of as pension portfolios and mutual funds. Bell said company shareholders approved a possible stock split at its 2004 annual shareholders meeting. Bell added that 35 per cent of the company's shares are held by company insiders directors or "We've seen a shift in ownership of the company over the past couple of years from individuals to institutions." I le added that it is "healthy for a publicly traded company" to have a wide enough shareholder base to include retail-level investors as well as institutional buyers such Subway torpedoes decades-old coupon deal BY MATT APUZZO Angiotech's new arm to find uses for technologies BY BRIAN MORTON VANCOUVER SUN MILFORD, Conn. The Sub way restaurant chain said Thursday it is ending its decades-old or" A' ijl-l! I "0Wvr wl' 4 it -v. klka iimtiiiiUftilf i rr 1 nnmrmrrririniiTrirHiitr tt wfrifcifci DIANA NETHERCOTTSPECIAL TO THE VANCOUVER SUN Barbara Hager, producerdirector with Aarrow Productions works with editor John Kendal.

The company's TV series, The New Canoe, which explores native art and culture In B.C. communities, is set to begin its fourth season. First nations woman heads TV production company VENTURE CAPITAL I Angiotech Pharmaceuticals, a Vancouver-based biotech that developed the Taxus heart stent, has formed a new division that will invest up to $50 million over the next three years to develop new enterprises. Angiotech Drug Device Venture and Capital Enterprises ADDVANCE will explore new commercial avenues for Angiotech technology outside of the firm's core areas of interest. "We have numerous technologies that we'd never get around to commercializing ourselves," Angiotech's senior vice-president of medical affairs, Rui Ave-lar, said in an interview Thursday.

"Given that we'd never get at it, we've opened up a venture capital arm that becomes strategic to us." Angiotech's venture capital unit is expected to focus on forming collaborations with development-stage medical device companies. It may also establish joint ventures with other companies, Angiotech said, citing a $25-mil-lion investment and partnership with Orthovita last year. Avelar said it has already formed partnerships with Bron-cus, which has technology to address emphysema, and Histrongenics, which is involved in cartilage regeneration. Angiotech president William Hunter said in a news release that the division was established "to create a focused vehicle to reach out to the venture capital community and the exciting development stage companies they fund with both our substantial technology portfolio and capital resources. "We believe Angiotech scientists have discovered a substantial universe of new uses for existing pharmaceuticals in local applications, including in drug-device combinations.

We also have several technologies and products where no exact fit exists with our evolving product development and commercialization efforts, but nonetheless could represent significant value for our shareholders." Meanwhile, Angiotech Pharmaceuticals has also said it expects to earn more than $77 million US in profits this year on revenues of between $205 million and $212 million. i The company said it expects profits of between 92 and 95 cents US per diluted share for the full year ended Dec. 31. With just over 84 million shares outstanding, that would see the company post profits of between $77.4 million and $79.9 million US. That would be a 48- to 53-per MEDIA I Aarrow Productions was established to specialize in aboriginal communications tree sandwich promotion, amid concerns that counterfeiters have been creating and selling copies of the restaurant's proof-of-pur-chase stamps and cards.

Subway, which operates more than 23,000 restaurants in 82 countries including Canada, joins a growing list of businesses from pharmaceutical companies and cigarette manufacturers to recording studios and clothing designers who say counterfeiters have hurt their bottom line. Under the Sub Club promotion, which had run in some form since the 1980s, customers received a stamp for every six-inch sandwich they bought. A full card of eight stamps could be redeemed for a free sandwich. But thousands of stamps are for sale at online auction sites and company officials said franchise owners were increasingly discovering counterfeit stamps. "It's possible some of the stamps got by and we didn't even know," said company spokesman Kevin Kane.

"It's possible we don't even know the extent of it." Bud Miller, executive director of the Virginia-based Coupon Information Center, said coupon fraud exploded in 2003 as counterfeiters used high-quality printers and online auction sites to distribute millions of dollars in false coupons from companies. Grocers have struggled to spot fake coupons, which can be quite sophisticated or as simple as an altered expiration date. Some grocery stores have stopped accepting coupons printed from home after manufacturers refused to honour counterfeits. Miller said the situation is improving because retailers are getting better at spotting counterfeits and federal agents are cracking down on sophisticated scams. "Somebody doing one counterfeit is not going to bankrupt the system, but somebody doing thousands of these and e-mailing them out, that's where you get the problem." In Missouri last year, FBI agents arrested a man who sold thousands of dollars worth of bogus Applebees gift certificates online.

He received five months in prison. The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation last month that would strengthen anti-counterfeiting laws. The bill would require the destruction of equipment used to make counterfeit goods. Currently, pirated products are destroyed but the equipment is untouched, allowing more counterfeiting.

Subway is a privately held company, owned by Milford, Doctor's Associates Inc. Company sales in 2003 were $6.8 billion US. Associated Press BY MARKE ANDREWS VANCOUVER SUN "At the end of the first season, the station was thinking about bringing in an independent producer to take the series over, so I asked if I could submit a proposal," says Hager. "I went home and researched for the entire weekend on how to produce a television show. I got books, I looked on the Web, I called people about how to do a budget.

I came back with a proposal, and they looked at it and said, 'You can't do a series at this price. It's way too "So they helped me out a little bit, and then they sold me the show. They said they'd give me a broadcast licence for a season and see how I did." Aarrow did the show on budget and on time, and The New Canoe got renewed. Not only that, the show went national, spreading to several CHUM outlets in Ontario and the national cable network. The New Canoe keeps a crew of five people employed for six months of the year.

"Television is about telling a story and creating jobs," says Hager. "If you can create jobs for aboriginal people who are trained in television, then I think there are some good outcomes from the series." From what she's seen, her audience tends to be an older crowd with a curiosity for the world. "We're not a speedy show," says Hager. "We take things slowly and the stories emerge in a quieter way than most television shows. We don't try to hurry people up." Hager's will soon start production on From Bella Coola to Berlin.

She also has seven hours of video of her daughter's high school band field trip to Detroit, where they befriended Motown singer Martha Reeves. In two weeks, Reeves comes to Victoria to conduct a workshop with the band and perform with them at a nightclub. Reeves has agreed to make a documentary with Hager about the exchange. Hager has a Canadian director interested, and also an American television broadcaster. Hager's long-range plans for Aarrow Productions are to make a theatrical feature, and to continue to train aboriginal people in TV and film production.

"I'd like to create two or three internships every year to get people in the door," says Hager. "I'd like to help young people get their training and get their careers off the ground. My other goal is to create full-time, long-term positions, so we don't have to keep forming crews all the time." tribal dances for Europeans. She also has begun work on a new documentary about the relationship between a group of Victoria high school students and Motown legend Martha Reeves. "The New Canoe is all about capturing aboriginal arts and culture and showcasing those things to a mainstream audience," says Richard Gray, station manager for The New VI, adding the show attracts about 25,000 "committed and dedicated" viewers a week in the Vancouver Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.

"We consider this show a key part of our schedule." Hager farmed her first company, Aarrow Communications, 10 years ago, incorporating it as Aarrow Productions Inc. in 1999 when her federal government clients insisted they would only sign contracts with a corporation. In 2001, she worked as an associate producer on the first season of The New Canoe, which The New VI had started that year. By the show's second season, Hager was co-hosting and producing the show, not that she knew much about production. Back in her graduating year at Hope Senior Secondary School, Barbara Hager was selected "most likely to head a company." Today, the first nations woman runs Aarrow Productions which she first formed in 1999 to specialize in communications services for aboriginals, but now spends most of its time and resources making television productions.

On Saturday, at 7:30 p.m., Citytv and The New VI, as well as five Ontario stations will show the first episode of the fourth season of The New Canoe, which Hager hosts and produces. The half-hour show, which explores native art and culture in B.C. communities, has just been renewed for a fifth season. On Tuesday, Hager received the green light from Telefilm Canada for the one-hour historical documentary From Bella Coola to Berlin, which looks at the adventures of nine aboriginal British Columbia men who travelled to Germany to perform their cent increase over last year's earnings. The company said revenue goals for 2006 range between $235 million and $255 million US, with net income falling in the range of and $1.15 per share.

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