Ashley Madison users in US file lawsuits against cheating website over data release + MORE Aug 25th

While Canadians in most provinces are dipping into their savings, residents of British Columbia and Newfoundland and Labrador are on average putting away more funds than the rest of the country, says a new study.
Canadians drew down an average of $2,901 per household in 2014, according to WealthScapes 2015 data.
In contrast, residents of B.C. put away $3,705 per household—the most in the entire country. The high savings rates were mostly seen in Vancouver, likely encouraged by the costly down-payments required to buy a home in the city’s hot real estate market.
Households in Newfoundland and Labrador, meanwhile, enjoyed net savings of $1,075. This was likely caused by the 4.7% rise in household incomes—twice the national average—prompted by strong economic activity in the province’s flourishing mining, oil and gas sectors.
The rest of us can congratulate ourselves for one thing, however. Credit card debt only rose by 0.3% in 2014, which is 1.2% lower than the inflation rate. Canadians as a whole also shied away from borrowing from lines of credit, and saw balances actually decline by 1…

Q: I have $300,000 in U.S. funds sitting in a bank account getting next to nothing in interest. Being a conservative investor, what could I consider to invest in?
—Anonymous
A: Unfortunately, Anonymous, your question is difficult to answer. It is very broad. So I’ll give a broad answer, but try to speak to all the relevant considerations.
I’m often asked how someone should invest their money and it’s hard to provide an answer in isolation. A thorough understanding of your risk tolerance is important, as one person’s “conservative” can look very different from that of another person.
I distinctly remember starting to work with a new client in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008 who described herself as a conservative investor. We tallied up her investments–held at different institutions–to identify her current asset allocation. She was 90% in stocks, which seemed entirely inappropriate for a “conservative,” widowed retiree in her late 60s with limited investment knowledge and no pension…

WASHINGTON – Many Americans have just absorbed a financial beating — at least as measured by their stock holdings. It’s the kind of blow that can feed a sense of helplessness about retirement, college savings and higher-than-expected bills.
But take a look at other gauges of Americans’ financial health, and a more nuanced picture emerges:
Hiring and home values are up. Gas prices and mortgage rates are down. Inflation is low. The pace of layoffs has dwindled.
Add it up, and the evidence suggests that many Americans — though certainly not all — are doing comparatively well.
Even the stock-market swoon can be put in perspective: Yes, the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index has tumbled 7 per cent over the past week. Since the end of 2008, though, the S&P index has jumped nearly 123 per cent.
For some, the stock sell-off has been an occasion to take a breath, recall previous down markets that eventually recovered and summon the patience to wait for their investments to rebound…

LOS ANGELES, Calif. – Eight people across the U.S. who registered to use Ashley Madison are suing the cheating website after hackers released personal and detailed information of millions of users, including financial data and sexual proclivities.
The lawsuits were filed between last month and Monday by Ashley Madison users in California, Texas, Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee and Minnesota. They all seek class-action status to represent the estimated 37 million registered users of Ashley Madison.
The lawsuits, which seek unspecified damages, claim negligence, breach of contract and privacy violations. They say Ashley Madison failed to take reasonable steps to protect the security of its users, including those who paid a special fee to have their information deleted.
Last month, hackers infiltrated Ashley Madison’s website and downloaded private information. The details — including names, emails, home addresses, financial data and message history — were posted publicly online last week…

TORONTO – Securities regulators have imposed fines of more than $2.7 million along with other sanctions in an insider trading case involving former Bay Street lawyer Mitchell Finkelstein, his longtime friend Paul Azeff and three others.
The penalties announced Tuesday follow a decision in March when a panel of the Ontario Securities Commission found that Finkelstein provided tips on three major deals between 2004 and 2007 while he was working for the legal firm Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP.
The commission said the recipient of the information was Azeff, a friend of Finkelstein dating to their university days who worked for CIBC in Montreal as an investment adviser.
The commission said Azeff fed the information to one of his friends, Korin Bobrow, who worked at CIBC, and both either bought shares of the target companies for themselves, their family members or clients.
The regulator said they also told other friends, who also bought shares for themselves, family members and clients…