Blog Posts by Noel Hulsman

A few years ago, while on a boys weekend in Ann Arbor to catch a University of Michigan football game, a number of us stopped in at the nearest Walgreens to stock up for the pre-game tailgating bash. They bought some Bud. Being an aesthete, I grabbed a bottle of Smoking Loon, a nice Californian Cabernet Sauvignon that sells for roughly $15 in Ontario. I believe it was US$7.95 that morning. (Some of the details of the day remain fuzzy).

That trip brought home a couple of points. The first being that you know you’re no longer in Canada when you can pick up your favourite red at a drug store before 9 a.m. And you’re definitely no longer home when you’re about to go enjoy it in a parking lot with some 107,000 others before a college football game.

Variations on both those points emerged in your responses to a recent Money Minute episode titled the ‘5 items that will cost you much less in the U.S.’. We compared food, cars, clothes, books, gadgets, housing and booze and in every instance, we

Not since Mitt Romney opted to very-publicly write off 47 per cent of the electorate, has a leading figure self-inflicted such a boneheaded injury. And while it's probably a stretch to call Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Mike Jeffries a leading figure, certainly his brand is universally known; even more so now that his remarks about fat women and uncool kids have very prominently surfaced.

In fairness to Jeffries, the comments date back to a 2006 interview he gave with Salon, where he made clear distinctions between the various market segments that might gravitate to Abercrombie & Fitch’s latest lines. Every CEO thin slices his customer base, and markets accordingly, so there’s nothing unusual there. Even his views would be OK, or at least somewhat understandable, if they had been confined to his boardroom.

But what was most definitely uncool was declaring in an interview that: “A lot of people don’t belong [in our clothes], and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely”. The people he

Recently in Money Minute, we explored four ways to save your self $6,000 a year. The tips were as wide-ranging as possible, while also being pretty easy to adopt. There was no ‘sell your car’ suggestions, or restrict yourself to two-meals-a-day ideas. We did however propose going easy on those lunches out maybe put a limit on the number of lattes you grab from Starbucks each week. Simple stuff: brown bag it and brew your own.

At the end of the episode, like we always do, we asked for your tips; what do you do to cut costs and keep a little more of that pay cheque in your pocket. As ever, the responses were illuminating. They also reflected a fair amount of consensus. Most commenters agreed that cutting your landline phone was probably the fastest, smartest and easiest way to immediately save money.

If that was the top idea, it was by no means the only one. From all of the suggestions put forward, we sorted through and selected the top five ways to spend less each month, after you’ve cut

The minimum wage for a Bangladeshi garment worker is US$38 a month. W. Galen Weston, the executive chairman of George Weston Ltd, and family are worth $8 billion. While seemingly disjointed, those two numbers have a very tangential relationship.

But that’s a nuance that’s largely lost in the Twitterverse, the galaxy in which a photo of a Joe Fresh label amidst the rubble of a collapsed clothing factory in Bangladesh that killed at least 400 workers was widely distributed. The world of Twitter isn’t quite as Hobbesian as the conditions inside the average Dhaka sweatshop, but it can be just as unforgiving, a fact that would have played no small part in the recent decision by two Weston-controlled companies, U.K.-based Primark and Loblaw, makers of Joe Fresh, to compensate victims of the worst industrial accident to hit South Asia.

This isn’t to say Weston’s companies wouldn’t have reached out to the workers’ families regardless. However, there’s no question that the specter of one of

Entrepreneurs looking to build their brand would do well to take some cues from the stars of Dragon’s Den, a group that has managed to attract millions of viewers to the popular reality TV show, and turn themselves into household names.

Whoever thought a venture capitalist would have problems coping with the fame?  “It’s been an adjustment,” admits Bruce Croxon, who left behind the relative anonymity of founding the online dating website Lavalife to join the CBC show two years ago. “You get recognized at airports, when you go out to eat … I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.”

It’s a rare day in this country when an entrepreneur can speak of getting too much attention. But that’s the reality now for Croxon and his four co-stars, each of whom has made the journey from unknown small business owner to multi-millionaire celebrity. At a recent press event to promote the upcoming season, Croxon, Arlene Dickinson and David Chilton offered advice on how to chart the course to your own super brand.

In the face of bonuses that would make traders at Goldman Sachs blush, Barrick shareholders finally pushed back, voting down the proposed pay packages for the gold miner’s top execs. It’s the first time a major Canadian company has ever lost a say-on-pay call.

And while largely symbolic, as Wednesday’s vote isn’t binding, it sends a much-needed message not only to Barrick’s board, but to Canadian investors: There is a line -- however faint, distant and trodden -- that even the most avarice of execs shouldn’t cross; not when they’ve presided over a 54-per-cent collapse in stock price over the past year.

If the seven institutional investors hadn’t stood up to Barrick’s compensation plan, then no say-on-pay action could ever be taken, as this case is about as egregious as it gets. It’s almost Stronach-esque in its audacity. And like the Croesus-sized cheques Stronach has long collected from Magna, the tradition of Barrick’s board paying themselves handsomely dates back years. But even by

If you’re going to have a bad week, it’s better to have it amid a jam-packed news cycle, but no amount of headlines elsewhere can mask the wretched week Japanese automakers are now enduring.

On Thursday came word that Honda is recalling 20,000 vehicles in Canada, part of a North American-wide effort encompassing up to 225,000 SUVs and minivans. The problem, says Honda, is with a safety feature within the automatic shifter that’s supposed to stop drivers from moving out of park without a foot on the brake.

So far there have been no injuries or damage reported, save, of course, for the reputation of Honda. It was only on last week that Honda joined four other automakers in pulling 3.4 million cars off the road to fix a problem with airbags. More than half of the recalled vehicles are Hondas, equipped with airbags that threaten to deploy with too much pressure, potentially exploding and sending out plastic shards. The airbags, supplied by Tokyo-based Takata Corp, are believed to have to

Sports are generally held to possess all of the main narratives in the world of business: The courage of conviction, the power of perseverance, the virtue of grace in victory or defeat. These qualities are especially embraced during annual extravaganzas like March Madness, the month-long U.S. basketball tournament famed for pitting powerhouse colleges against valiant underdogs, producing shocking upsets and Cinderella stories by the score.

Inspiring stuff, to be sure, but none are as instructive, or frankly as telling as the story unfolding this week in Newark, New Jersey, involving a basketball program miles from the Final Four.

Rutgers University fired its men’s basketball coach on Wednesday, after a short series of miscues, half-truths, blown calls and just fall-out speechless stupidity. The business world will hopefully learn something from this, as it is safe bet that the NCAA won’t.

By the sheer facts at hand, this should have been a very simple matter. In November, a former