Laurentian Bank to acquire Canadian arm of CIT Group + MORE Jun 30th

WestJet looks like one of 2016’s most likely value picks. (Machado Noa/Lightrocket/Getty)
A stock screen is a little like a GPS device. It’ll offer directions, but when what it tells you doesn’t match what you see on the road ahead, you’d best use your judgment.
If our value screen last year was the GPS, Encana Corp. was the lake, hidden in darkness and fog. The stock looked cheap, but when energy prices stayed volatile, investors should have steered clear. Even with dividends, Encana shares lost 51% over the past year. Screens have the advantage of avoiding the biases held by human stock pickers, but sometimes an active manager, like a conscientious driver, can do a better job of spotting the hazards dead ahead.
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Most years, our value screen performs quite well, handily beating the market benchmark, and sometimes it does spectacularly…

MONTREAL – Laurentian Bank of Canada (TSX:LB) has reached an agreement with New York-based CIT Group Inc. to acquire its Canadian equipment financing and corporate financing activities.
The Montreal-based bank didn’t announce the full purchase price but did say it would pay for part of the acquisition through a $135-million financing, announced separately.
The purchase is scheduled to close in the final quarter of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions.
CIT Canada, based in Burlington, Ont., operates primarily in the equipment and corporate finance sectors. Its portfolio under management is worth about $1 billion.
Once the deal is closed, about 140 employees of CIT Canada will join the bank in a new subsidiary to be called LBC Capital.
Laurentian Bank says it believes the acquisition will boost its adjusted earnings per share by approximately four per cent in 2018.
“By providing a more complete line of products and services, a larger pool of customers and an enhanced sales force deployment, this agreement will contribute directly to achieve our growth agenda,” said Laurentian Bank president and CEO Francois Desjardins…

NEW DELHI – The World Bank signed an agreement on Thursday with the Indian-led International Solar Alliance to boost solar energy in developing countries by mobilizing $1 trillion in investments by 2030.
It said the agreement, signed by World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal, established the World Bank as a financial partner of the alliance.
The alliance was launched by India and France at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris last November and includes about 120 countries that support the promotion of solar energy.
As part of the agreement, the World Bank will work with other multilateral development banks and financial institutions to develop financing for solar energy development, the World Bank said.
In addition, it plans to provide more than $1 billion to support India’s initiatives to expand solar power generation through projects including solar rooftop technology, infrastructure for solar parks and transmission lines for solar-rich states, it said…

VANCOUVER – British Columbia’s real estate industry no longer deserves the privilege of self-regulation and will have that authority stripped away, Premier Christy Clark announced after a damning report concluded the sector had lost the public trust.
Clark said Wednesday the province will hire a new superintendent of real estate, who will take over the rule-making, oversight and disciplinary powers that have been held by the Real Estate Council of B.C. since 2005.
“The real estate sector has had 10 years to get it right on self-regulation and they haven’t,” Clark told a news conference. “So we are going to end the right of the real estate sector to self-regulate.”
The announcement comes a day after an independent advisory group tasked with restoring consumer confidence in the industry released a report with 28 recommendations, including hefty fines for misconduct.
The report did not make a recommendation on self-regulation, but it said such a regime works when members of the profession hold themselves and each other to a higher standard than anyone else…

Having nudged out U.S. and European purchasers, Chinese now account for 65 per cent of all foreign investment in bigger, more expensive real estate so far this year