Cenovus reaches agreement to sell Suffield assets for $512 million + MORE Sep 26th

TORONTO _ Chinese online payment platform Alipay has partnered with tech firm SnapPay Inc. to enable Canadian retailers to accept Chinese currency from Chinese shoppers through a mobile wallet.
Alipay North America president Souheil Badran says the company wants to offer Canadian merchants the opportunity to access the Chinese market.
He says 700 Canadian merchants already accept Alipay.
But the partnership gives the payment platform an opportunity to aggressively explore opportunities for expansion in the education, winery, restaurant and retail sectors.
The company touts the increasingly lucrative role Chinese consumers could play for Canadian businesses, given the country’s growing middle class.
Alipay, originally created by Chinese online shopping giant Alibaba.com, was launched in 2004 and has more than 520 million active users. It is now owned by Ant Financial Services Group, a “related company” to Alibaba.
“We want to continue offering Chinese consumers visiting Canada the ability to pay as they would in China…

CALGARY _ The CEO of Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE) says it is “right on target” with its asset sales plan after announcing a deal Monday to sell its Suffield oil and gas operations in southern Alberta to International Petroleum Corp. (TSX:IPCO) for $512 million in cash.
The package, which includes production from wells on a Canadian Forces base as well as adjacent property, is the second of four key asset sales Cenovus has promised to deliver to help pay for its $17.7-billion purchase of most of the Canadian assets of ConocoPhillips.
It announced in early September it would sell its Pelican Lake heavy oil operations in northern Alberta for $975 million to Calgary-based rival Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. (TSX:CNQ).
“We’re right on target with the financial plan we put in place to deleverage our balance sheet following our recent transformational acquisition of assets in Western Canada,” said Cenovus CEO Brian Ferguson in a news release.
“The successful execution of our planned divestiture program this year will further focus our asset base and should leave us well positioned to drive additional shareholder value from our core assets in the oilsands and Deep Basin…

Is the company’s financial reporting better under Papa than Pearson? In one important way, the answer appears to be ‘no’

TORONTO _ Rallying energy stocks helped lift the Toronto stock index higher today as U.S stock indices fell amid the latest North Korea comments.
The S&P/TSX composite index was up 62.00 points to 15,516.23, as the November crude contract soared $1.56 to US$52.22 per barrel for the first time since mid-April.
In New York, a tech sell-off overshadowed gains for energy as investors absorbed remarks made by North Korea’s foreign minister regarding President Donald Trump’s weekend tweet that leader Kim Jong Un may not be “around much longer” was a declaration of war.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 53.50 points to 22,296.09. The S&P 500 index edged down 5.56 points to 2,496.66 and the Nasdaq composite index declined 56.33 points to 6,370.59.
The Canadian dollar was trading at an average price of 81.03 cents US, down 0.16 of a cent.
Elsewhere in commodities, the December gold contract spiked $14.00 to US$1,311.50 an ounce.
The November natural gas contract was down three cents to US$2…

Trudeau says he has listened to public feedback and is looking at balancing reform without hurting investment