Log house for sale? Who’s buying? + MORE Jun 12th

NEW YORK, N.Y. – The following is a list of initial public offerings planned for the coming week. Sources include IPO ETF manager Renaissance Capital, and SEC filings.
Week of June 15:
Cynapsus Therapeutics Inc. – Toronto, Canada, 4.5 million shares, priced at $14, managed by BofA Merril Lynch. Proposed Nasdaq symbol CYNA. Business: Developing a sublingual formulation of an approved therapy for Parkinson’s disease. Trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
8point3 Energy Partners LP – San Jose, Calif., 20 million common units, priced $19 to $21, managed by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, and Deutsche Bank. Proposed Nasdaq symbol CAFD. Business: Solar energy yieldco formed by First Solar and SunPower.
Fitbit Inc. – San Francisco, 29.85 million class A shares, priced $14 to $16, managed by Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank. Proposed NYSE symbol FIT. Business: Offers wearable fitness devices that track daily activities.
Fogo de Chao Inc. – Dallas, 4.4 million shares, priced $16 to $18, managed by Jefferies, and J…

The ice cold arctic. Home to the rough and ready—and the backdrop to a number of popular reality TV shows including three of my favourites Gold Rush, Deadliest Catch and Yukon Men. (Others include: Ice-Road Truckers, Alaska-The Final Frontier, Escaping Alaska, Bering Sea Gold (aka: the angriest gold miners on planet earth), Alaska Monsters, Wild West Alaska (on Animal Planet), Railroad Alaska and Edge of Alaska.)
Enter one more: Yukon For Sale.
The show is less day-to-day survival and more about enduring the house hunt in one of Canada’s remotest provinces. Not a bad premise given how difficult it is to come up with an original concept when it comes to real estate reality TV shows. (Added feature: Canadian Country music singer George Canyon narrates this wild real estate ride that takes viewers out into the middle of North America’s untamed wilderness.)
Premiering Saturday, June 13 at 9 p.m. EST (6 p.m. PST) the 30-minute show follows house hunting Yukoners, both native and newbies to the north, who are in search of unique properties to satisfy their northern living needs…

When was the last time you read a pseudo-bureaucratic report that used the term gobsmacked? Well, that’s the term the British Columbia Real Estate Association (BCREA) used to describe the overwhelming reaction by the masses to the “rapid acceleration in home prices” in Metro Vancouver from 2002 to 2008.
Yep. Gobsmacked. And it’s actually quite appropriate. Prior to my visit this year, I just couldn’t understand how anyone would fork out north of $1-million for an outdated tear-down on a small lot. (I guess that’s how non-Torontonians feel about my home town’s real estate market.)
But after a brief visit—and lots of visual inspections—I can finally appreciate why: Land scarcity. There just not making any more land out there on the west coast.
And this is the focal point of a new BCREA report—and the counter-point to why foreign investors really aren’t the problem in Vancouver.
According to the BCREA, the data and analysis of sales from a number of sources show that foreign investment insufficiently impacts the Metro Vancouver market, “save for a small segment of luxury homes…

PARIS – Notable events in the life of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the 66-year-old former leader of the International Monetary Fund, who was acquitted Friday of pimping charges by a court in the northern city of Lille:
1986: Elected to Parliament for the Socialist Party in the Val-d’Oise district north of Paris. Goes on to become mayor of Sarcelles, a working-class immigrant suburb.
1997: Serves as Finance and Economy Minister under a new Socialist government through 1999. Manages launch of the euro and represents France on the board of governors for financial institutions, including the International Monetary Fund.
2000: Teaches economics at Paris’ prestigious political science institute, Sciences Po, and is named visiting professor at California’s Stanford University.
2006: Runs for the Socialist Party’s nomination for the French presidential election; finishes second in primary.
2007: French novelist and journalist Tristane Banon claims Strauss-Kahn tried to force sexual relations with her during a 2003 interview with him…

It’s about far more than the stock price, though that’s not pretty either