State Of The Race

Driving The News

Toronto-based Cineplex and U.K.-based Cineworld headed to court yesterday over a flopped takeover. 

Catch up: Cineworld had planned to buy Cineplex in December 2019 for $2.8 billion. However, Cineworld called off the deal last June just as the pandemic forced theatres to close. 

What’s happening: Cineworld argues that it didn't drop the deal because of the pandemic, but because Cineplex breached terms of their contract which stipulated that Cineplex could not do anything that would damage the business before the deal closed. 

Zoom out: Cineplex and Cineworld aren’t the only companies trying to navigate the fallout of the pandemic on M&A deals. Volkswagen, Softbank, and Gray Television also tried to bail on big acquisitions after the pandemic struck.

Facebook gives special treatment to select users on its platform, according to the WSJ.

What they found: According to internal documents obtained by the WSJ, Facebook has a program called XCheck which exempts certain high-profile users, like celebs, athletes, and politicians, from the platform's rules.

The program was first developed to avoid PR messes for Facebook: XCheck would flag a post by a high-profile user which would then be reviewed by a content moderator to confirm whether or not their post violated content guidelines before it got pulled.

Why it matters: The program has since provided a route for high-profile users to completely bypass content guidelines. 

Bottom line: With more than 3 billion users, Facebook has become a dominant forum for global communication, but it continues to struggle with setting and enforcing a standard set of fair and equal rules for all its users.

There’s arguably never been a better time to be in e-commerce. It seems like every day there’s a new story about another e-commerce business achieving unicorn status or raising a huge round.

But let’s get real: e-commerce is tough. There’s tons of competition, it’s hard to stand out from the crowd, and for every one big winner there’s lots of failures you never hear about.

That’s why brand and performance marketing are so critical right now, and that’s Taylor Day’s bread and butter.

Talk to Taylor Day about how you can marry brand and sophisticated performance marketing to start selling more now.

A Chinese-based medical company wants to buy Calgary-based Providence Therapeutics' mRNA vaccine technology. 

What’s Providence Therapeutics? Providence Therapeutics is working on a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Their vaccine is still undergoing clinical trials, but they have signed deals to send shots to several countries in Asia, including India and Pakistan. 

China has developed its own vaccines that are made using an inactivated form of COVID-19, but it still doesn't have an mRNA-based shot. 

The deal: Pending the green light from regulators, China-based Everest Medicines will license the tech behind Providence Therapeutics’ COVID-19 vax for US-$500 million. 

Zoom out: China seems to be changing their tune on mRNA vaccines because of 1) the spread of the Delta variant and 2) research suggesting their homegrown vaccines aren’t as effective as Pfizer’s vaccine. 

The Chinese government plans to break up Alipay, the world’s biggest mobile payments app.

Refresher: Alipay lets users transfer money to others, pay for online or in-store purchases, and sign up for a credit card, among other financial services. It has 1.3 billion+ active users.  

Alipay has two units called Huabei and Jiebei that provide lending services. 

Zoom out: China is cracking down on how private companies like Alipay use their customers’ data because, as one source told the FT, they believe “big tech’s monopoly power comes from their control of data.” 

Amazon plans to add 15,000 warehouse jobs in Canada.

Refresher: Amazon's new CEO Andy Jassy announced earlier in September that it would hire 55,000 workers around the world to fill corporate and tech roles. 

Amazon is growing their warehouse and distribution centre headcount by 60% in Canada, and will bump workers’ pay from $17 an hour to $21.65 an hour. 

Double-edged sword: In March, Amazon was forced to suspend operations at their Brampton, Ontario warehouse after hundreds of workers tested positive for COVID-19. Public health officials in the U.S. and Europe have also criticized Amazon for their working conditions during the pandemic. 

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