Foreign buyers make up 4.7% of home sales in Ontario's Golden Horseshoe area + MORE Jul 5th

The national group representing credit unions says its members are being treated unfairly by a federal regulator that is prohibiting them from using the terms “bank,” “banker” and “banking” to describe their services.
The Canadian Credit Union Association says the ban on the terminology makes it difficult for credit unions to compete fairly with banks.
The directive was contained in an advisory issued last Friday by the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI).
The association says it has interpreted the advisory to mean that any member who continues to use these terms can face criminal charges.
The group also notes that due to the changes, credit unions will have to remove any banking references from their advertising materials and their websites _ a move it called an “unnecessary and expensive undertaking.”
OSFI says it issued the advisory to provide clarity after observing increased use of the words “bank,” “banker” and “banking” by financial service providers that aren’t banks…

A month’s worth of new data from the Ontario government is the first solid indicator of the role international investors played in the area’s overheated real estate market

PwC survey says investors have an appetite for offerings that is not matched by companies seeking capital

Canada’s main stock index was dragged lower this morning, pulled down by most sectors including gold and materials stocks.
The S&P/TSX composite index was down 71.54 points at 15,110.65, after 90 minutes of trading.
South of the border, U.S. markets were closed for the July 4 holiday.
The Canadian dollar was trading at 77.37 cents US, up from 77.06 cents US on Friday.
The bump in the loonie came after Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz reiterated hawkish comments about interest rates in an interview with German newspaper Handelsblatt.
Expectations have increased that the central bank will raise its key interest rate at its next rate announcement on July 12.
In commodities, the August crude contract was up 17 cents at US$47.24 per barrel and the August natural gas contract jumped two cents at US$2.98 per mmBTU.
The August gold contract gained US$3.80 to US$1,223 an ounce and the September copper contract dipped a penny at US$2.69 a pound.
The post TSX weakens on gold and materials stocks; loonie gains on Poloz’s comments appeared first on Canadian Business – Your Source For Business News.

The U.S. government has long warned that Russian organized crime posed a threat to democratic institutions, including “criminally linked oligarchs” who might collude with the Russian government to undermine business competition.
Those concerns, ever-present if not necessarily always top priorities, are front and centre once more.
An ongoing special counsel investigation is drawing attention to Russian efforts to meddle in democratic processes, the type of skullduggery that in the past has relied on hired hackers and outside criminals. It’s not clear how much the probe by former FBI Director Robert Mueller will centre on the criminal underbelly of Moscow, but he’s already picked some lawyers with experience fighting organized crime. And as the team looks for any financial entanglements of Trump associates and relationships with Russian officials, its focus could land again on the intertwining of Russia’s criminal operatives and its intelligence services.
Russian organized crime has manifested itself over the decades in more conventional forms of money laundering, credit card fraud and black market sales…