National Post from Toronto, Ontario, Canada • 42

mrvmmmmmn pi m-m m-m II Fi'L I A I A ywniiAT iiSAyciALvosr.coM a lurrruijuin FIRST ON FINANCI ALPOSTCOM Visit linancialpost.com each day to catch FP Headline News video with Alia McMullen. AT FINANCIALPOST.COM VV SUMMARY CANADIAN ECONOMY I SUk mttrkrts tumbled and the Canadian dollar lost more than L'Slt CO MM NT Mediation starts in Thow case jr j. -( A GETTY 1MACE3 David Tyree, No. 85 of the New York Giants, catches a 32-yard pass as Rodney Harrison, No. 37 of the New England Patriots, attempts to knock the ball out of his hands in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl XLII.

More than five million Canadians tuned in to watch last Sunday's game a record viewership. yesterday as Investors came to grips wun a nosedive In U.S. service-sector activity, which Inm-iised the odds of a wurse-than-expet'teu recession. Srf Nat U.S. ECONOMY Concern is mounting In the United States that more people are falling behind on their car loan payments, a situation that has forced big lenders to hire more collectors and could hammer auto sales this year in a market that is already weakening.

The latest evidence came yesterday after finance company GMAC reported a loss of for the fourth quarter, prompting a downgrade by Moody's Investors Service. See Page hPl ROGUE TRADER The dealer blamed for a rogue trader loss at French bank Societe Generale told AFP yesterday he had got "a bit carried away," but refused to be made a scapegoat for the whole scandal. J6r6me Kerviel, who was propelled to worldwide notoriety overnight by his role in the affair, agreed to meet AFP at his lawyer's Paris offices for his first interview since the scandal broke late last month. See Page FP1 NIKE Thirteen years after acquiring Bauer, and making bold promises that it would transform the business of hockey, Nike has put its Nike Bauer unit up for sale. See Page FP3 SHOPPERS DRUG MART Shares of Shoppers Drug Mart Corp.

rose 4.4 yesterday after the drug-and-cosmetics retailer reported fourth-quarter profit growth of 16, dispelling investor unease about a downturn in the retail sector. See Page FP3 BP British energy giant BP defends its investment in Alberta's oilsands, countering attacks it is investing in dirty energy and abandoning a previous commitment to look "beyond petrol." See Page FP4 CGI GROUP Outsourcing and information-technology firm CGI Group Inc. reported a 66 jump in first-quarter profit yesterday, as new bookings helped results. See Page FP4 WHEAT A bout of cold, rainy weather in the middle of the Prairie wheat-growing season is being blamed for a dramatic shortfall in stockpiles that in turn has pushed prices well into record territory. See Page FP5 FPIPODCAST Download FP Podcast daily for a summary of national and international business news, plus overnight markets.

financialpost.com COMPANIES IN THE NEWS Air Canada FP4 Auckland FP4 Barrick Gold FP4 BP PLC FP1 Campbell Soup Canada Pension FP4 CGI Group Inc. FP4 Citigroup Inc. FP2 Coalcorp Mining FP4 Chrysler FP14 Ford Motor FP4 GMAC LLC FP1 Goldman Sachs FP9 Google Inc. FP16 Husky Energy Invesco FPU JP Morgan Chase FP2 Manitoba Tel. FP4 Microsoft Corp.

Morgan Stanley FP2 Nokia Corp FP14 Pala Fp RioTinto Fpjg Royal Bank fpj Scotiabank FP2 Shoppers Drug FP3 Societe Generale TeckCominco FP9 TD Bank j-pj WesUet FP4 I Yahoo! Inc. FP16 Barry Critciii.ey Off the Record For some clients of Ian Thow, the hope is that mediation will end their nightmare. Thow is the former senior staffer with the Berkshire Group in Victoria who, in the words of the B.C. Securities Commission, pulled off "one of the most callous and audacious frauds this province has seen." Those mediation efforts Geoff Plant, a former B.C. attorney-general is the mediator started this week in the hope they will mitigate expensive and time-consuming litigation.

If that's the goal, the feeling is the clients will have to take a haircut despite the claim that Berkshire and its new owner, Manulife Financial are committed to reaching a resolution fair to all involved. How do we know that? For ers, all the cards are stacked in favour of Berkshire, and its law firm Torys, for the simple reason that it has far more resources than Thow's clients. And despite some soothing words from Berkshire started by Michael Lee-Chin, whose net worth is north of $2-billion and Manulife, no serious attempts have been made to satisfy the clients until now. Their argument is that the activities involving Thow who is estimated to have taken more than $30-million from his clients were non-Berkshire business. Berkshire says the disaffected clients should have known that.

Second, Thow's clients are desperate. The B.C Securities Commission which has fined Thow $6-million and banned him for life noted that as a result of investing with Thow, "clients lost their retirement funds, and other clients find themselves in financial difficulty. Clients continue to suffer stress, anxiety, depression and other health problems." In short, they are, in some cases, old and vulnerable and short of cash. But all of them trusted Thow, whom they had known for many years and who was seemingly a prominent member of the local community. "Some clients were impressed with his wealth, and with his apparent close relationship with Michael Lee Chin," the BCSCsaid.

Third, if Berkshire and Manulife wanted the situation to end, they would say, 'We will pay you what you lost plus interest' In short: not a penny more not a penny less. But we will never know how good the mediation deals are because Berkshire has made all the former clients sign confidentiality agreements. (If BerkshireManulife wanted to show their commitment in a public way, they could issue a press release that detailed the settlements minus the names, of course and the haircuts. Then they would let everybody judge how fair they are.) On the positive side, Berkshire has tried mediation in the past with about two dozen of Thow's former clients. Again, they were asked to sign confidentiality agreements.

Glacier's deal What a difference a few months make: This week, AAA-rated Glacier Credit Card Trust priced a SSOO-million, five-year offering of senior notes. The notes haw a coupon of 5.027 and the deal was upped from a minimum $350-niilliun financing. Bank of Montreal and Bank of Nova Scotia were the joint leads on the deal, priced at 150 basis points above Canada bonds. Last November, Glacier, whose deals are backed by Canadian Tire receivables, postponed a $300-million offering of five-year notes because of unsatisfactory market conditions. inancial Post bi ntihlcyia natwnalpont.com FPIPOSTED English Canada, while RDS (TSN's French-language counterpart), got an average of 905,000 viewers in Quebec, according to BBM Nielsen Media Research.

Global TV garnered a bigger Super Bowl audience in 2006 with 4.3 million viewers, but the audience in Quebec was smaller that year. An audience of four million is huge in English Canada last November, the Grey Cup pulled in about 2.8 million viewers and ranks as one of the biggest of the year. However, in Quebec the Super Bowl numbers for cable-only RDS were well below the usual audience for the top-ranked French-language dramas. Up to two million Quebecers watch shows such as TVA's LeBanquier in a market one-quarter the size of the rest of Canada. Grant Surridge FINANCIAL SERVICES TD ALSO GOES GREEN Toronto-Dominion Bank has announced it will be carbo-neutral by 2010.

The bank with the big green signs says it will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, purchase green power and set up the "TD Emissions Reduction Fund." TD's adoption of environmentally friendly policies is part of a growing trend within the banking industry in North America. Canadian rival Bank of Nova Scotia revealed on Monday it has set up a climate-change fund, which the bank claimed was "the first of its kind in Canada." Also on Monday, Citigroup JPMorgan Chase Co. and Morgan Stanley said they will set standards for lending to power companies. The giants of the U.S. banking industry said they will produce climate-change guidelines called "The Carbon Principles," to help advisors and lenders to power companies.

And last year, Royal Bank of Canada announced the creation of the $50-million Blue Water Project, a 10-year program to support water conservation "and other water-related issues." Duncan Mavin ECONOM RUBIN WARNS ON EQUITY MARKETS The stumbling U.S. economy and the likelihood of further losses at Wall Street banks point to a miserable spring for North American stock markets, says Jeff Rubin, chief strat- WEALTHY BOOMER. A RETIREMENT ON $25,000 If you ever travelled in the 1960s or 1970s, you may remember a guide book called Europe on $10 a day. I thought of that book today when Sun Life Financial released the results of a survey that found an equal number of Canadians believe they'll need just $25,000 for retirement as those who reckon on a more realistic range of $l-million to $5-million. Just You gotta love it.

As they say on Internet chat forums: ROFL or ROFLMAO. Rolling on Floor Laughing: ask a teenager what MAO means. Even at a generous 10 return a year, $25,000 would generate a pittance of $2,500 a year, a figure that would cover neither rent nor property taxes never mind all the other expenses of daily life. Apart from such a wide divergence of estimates, fully 43 flat out admitted they didn't have a clue how much they needed to save for retirement. Some 52 expect to be retired for at least 20 years but nine million Canadian workers don't know how many years they'll need their savings to last.

From every expert I've ever talked to, I can help there you can reckon on anywhere from 20 to 40 years, depending on how early or late you retire. See the second item below for more on this. The Sun Life survey, conducted by Omnitel, found Canadians would like to retire between 55 and 60, but in practice they expect the more realistic figure will be 65 to 70. That's a 10-year gap between aspiration and reality. Asked about their main concerns about retirement, 31 specified not saving enough, while 28 fretted about outliving their savings.

Two sides of the same coin, I'd say. Jonathan Chevreau More info: MEDIA SUPER BOWL SETS CANADIAN AUDIENCE RECORD Super Bowl XLII won its highest-ever viewing audience in this country, with just over five million Canadians tuning in to watch the New England Patriots stumble in their attempt to complete a perfect season. CTVs first broadcast of the premier U.S. sporting event pulled in an average of 4.1 million viewers in egist at CIBC World Markets. "The tandem of falling U.S.

housing prices and rising default rates should trigger as much as another to in asset writedowns by North Amer ican banks over the next quarter, which, together with a visibly struggling U.S. economy, could be a catalyst for another 5 correction," Mr. Rubin says. He predicts that the in existing writedowns at global banks will balloon to when the dust settles at the end of the year. But for those with patience, Mr.

Rubin also has come welcome news he expects strong overseas economies and triple-digit oil prices to fuel a "powerful second-half rally" that will push the TSX back to 14,500. Meanwhile, Mr. Rubin is shaving nine percentage points off stocks in his portfolio weighting and socking that money into bonds. He says he'll start reversing his weighting back into stocks as the year progresses. Mr.

Rubin remains "overweight" in energy, gold and base-metal stocks, which he believes are the victims of subprime paranoia. Grant Surridge ECONOMY 'WELCOME BACK HEADWINDS': BMO'S GREGORY A couple of thoughts on credit markets and loan volumes from Michael Gregory, economist with BMO Capital Markets. He noted yesterday that U.S. bankers are tightening up credit standards in a "draconian fashion," according to the U.S. Federal Reserve's latest survey of senior loan officers.

Credit standards for commercial real-estate loans have risen to a record 18-year high, while standards for non-mortgage consumer loans are at a record 12-year high. Mr. Gregory writes: "Interestingly, the Fed began this survey after the Savings and Loan crisis (and 1990-91 recession) to gauge what then U.S. Fed chairman Alan Greenspan called 'financial headwinds' at the time. Welcome back, headwinds." Mr.

Gregory also notes that the the tightening of standards might prevent lower interest rates from pumping up loan volumes as much as they would otherwise. He says: "Could this be a case dare we say of pushing on a string?" Ore Hasselback.