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CEO challenge:

I read an article last week in one of our national papers calling for a so-called “death tax” – a dedicated tax on one's estate, much like the system south of the border. The article raised a number of interesting points and a fair bit of commentary, both positive and negative.

A few weeks ago I got an invitation from a woman I've never met to come to her house in Shaughnessy and talk with her neighbours about what was happening around them: perfectly good homes being bought up at exorbitant prices, torn down and replaced with trophy-like mansions; newly-built homes sitting empty; transient renters occupying other ones.

Shake effects

Rowland Kelly’s experience dealing with financial turmoil over four decades has helped him influence the growth of Canada’s credit-union system

Retail transition

We heard it again at last week’s Business in Vancouver editorial board meeting: “Companies get a great out-of-town candidate in their sights,” said one of the participants, “then that person clicks through to the real estate listings and calls back to turn down the job. They can’t afford to move here.”

Steve Jobs is gone, in what seemed mere weeks after leaving the top job at Apple, the company he co-founded. The bitter irony that millions would learn of his death via a device he invented was not lost on us. Over the course of his tenure, Jobs led Apple on a wild ride and changed our world irrevocably. He was arguably one of the best marketers out there.

In the fall of 2001, I was in the Victoria office of then-B.C. Attorney General Geoff Plant to discuss why the B.C. Liberal government had flipped positions on the Nisga’a treaty.

Can you feel the energy in the room? No?