Judge approves $200M settlement in 2012 meningitis outbreak linked to Massachusetts firm + MORE May 19th

Ottawa-based Shopify Inc. has lifted the amount of money it expects to raise in an IPO later this week to $141.7 million US.

Former investment banker says banks will not underwrite initial public offering for free

BOSTON – Victims of a 2012 meningitis outbreak caused by a now-closed Massachusetts compounding pharmacy will have access to a $200 million compensation fund, following approval Tuesday by a federal bankruptcy judge.
The new fund will be available to compensate creditors and victims who became ill or died as the result of receiving tainted steroid injections from the New England Compounding Center. It is part of a plan to liquidate the assets of the Framingham-based centre approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Henry Boroff.
“This is really the end process of the bankruptcy case, barring any appeals,” said David Molton, a New York lawyer representing creditors. “It starts a new phase in which the architecture and the structures we built in order to get money to victims will start their machinery.”
The 2012 fungal meningitis outbreak killed 64 people and sickened over 750. People in 20 states were affected; Indiana, Michigan, and Tennessee were the hardest hit…

The Street, The Bull and The Crisis, a new survey of people working in financial services in the USA and the UK tells us the mind-numbing news that instead of getting better following the financial crisis, the attitude that doing illegal or unethical things is the way to success is getting worse. Reading through the stats in the report it is apparent that the bad attitude is endemic, it’s the culture of the industry.It’s more than a bit worrying that the same type of behaviour that almost brought down the world’s financial system is still rife. As authors Ann Tenbrunsel and Jordan Thomas warn, “Allowing the status quo to persist is an open invitation to the next, perhaps more devastating, financial crisis”.I cannot stop the miscreants from destroying the financial system, other than lobbying politicians and regulators to knock heads, but I can try to keep my personal money as far away as possible from such people (defined in the report as those with titles such as “account executives, financial / investment / wealth advisors, financial analysts, investment bankers, branch/operations management, and portfolio managers”)…

Governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz arrives at a commons finance committee on Parliament Hill on Tuesday, April 28, 2015. (Justin Tang/CP)
OTTAWA – The recent rise in oil prices and the exchange rate are adding to uncertainty about the direction of the country’s economy, Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz said Tuesday.
In prepared remarks of a speech Poloz was to deliver in Charlottetown, he said the central bank will have to carefully monitor how companies and households react to such shifts and other financial developments over the coming months.
“Of course, I must underscore how uncertain the outlook is,” said Poloz’s speech for the Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce.
Poloz has said his fingers are crossed that the economy — still hurting from the late-2014 oil slump — will bounce back in the second quarter after he predicted zero growth for the first three months of this year.
The plunge in crude prices prompted the bank to lower its trend-setting interest rate in January to 0…