Brand Finance Canada’s Top 10 Canadian brands of 2012

      According to Brand Finance Canada, banks continue to top the list as our country's most valuable interbrands while energy and resource companies saw a huge decline in the last year. TD Bank’s growing influence in U.S. markets helped it to nab the top spot with an estimated brand value of $10.4 billion, with the Royal Bank of Canada close behind. RBC, Scotiabank, Bank of Montreal, and Bell rounded out the top five most valuable brands in the ranking, growing 19% in value, due to its growth in international markets.

However, not all Canadian brands brought home good news.

     Nearly half of the companies on the list saw their brand value drop, with energy and mining companies leading the pack — down 14 per cent. Brand Finance said that Enbridge, the only Canadian energy brand to land a spot the list, saw a decline of $550 million in its brand value. The decline translates into a 12 per cent drop, partly due to the company's controversial Northern Gateway project and its current pipeline projects in the U.S. Like Enbridge, Calgary-based Esso also saw a 12 per cent drop in value, while both Petro-Canada and Husky Energy saw a 4 per cent drop in brand value.On the other hand many Calgary-based head offices that saw their brands grow in value last year. Unfortunately, none of them were in the energy sector.

      Some of you may also notice that Research in Motion's  BlackBerry brand is not on the list. This is because their value declined 38 per cent in value to $2.04 billion. The ranking also signalled growth in value in Canada's retail brands, including gains from Dollarama , Tim Horton's, Lululemon and clothing manufacturer Gildan.

Here are  Brand Finance Canada’s top 10 Canadian brands:

1. Toronto-Dominion Bank
Brand value: $10.4 billion
Rank in previous list: 2

2. Royal Bank of Canada
Brand value: $10.3 billion
Rank in previous list: 1

3. Scotiabank
Brand value: $7 billion
Rank in previous list: 3

4. Bank of Montreal
Brand value: $6.5 billion
Rank in previous list: 4

5. Bell
Brand value: $5.5 billion
Rank in previous list: 5

6. CIBC
Brand value: $4.8 billion
Rank in previous list: 7

7. Rogers Communications
Brand value: $4.6 billion
Rank in previous list: 9

8. Enbridge
Brand value: $4.2 billion
Rank in previous list: 6

9. Bombardier
Brand value: $4 billion
Rank in previous list: 8

10. Weston
Brand value: $3.9 billion
Rank in previous list: 13

Wait...Why is Tim Horton's not on the list?

Banner Year for Canadian Airlines

     Canada's major airlines reported record load factors last year, with planes carrying substantially more passengers on average despite a sluggish economy.
     
 Load factor is a closely watched industry metric that tracks the percentage of passengers in available seats on any given airline's flights. Increased fare levels and load factor helps boost profit for airlines and it offsets higher fuel costs throughout the year.

 
     Air Canada said it had managed to fill its planes to record levels both in December and for the year as a whole. In a recent news release, Chief executive officer Calin Rovinescu said that they had to expand its seat capacity by 1.8% in 2012, so there were more seats available overall. But passenger traffic increased by even more, 3.2 % in December, which caused the load factor to jump even higher. The airline booked 12.6 billion revenue passenger miles in 2012 as a whole.

 
      Meanwhile, Air Canada's main rival, WestJet, saw its load factor hit 81.9 per cent. For the year as a whole, Calgary-based WestJet's passenger traffic was up 7.1 per cent to 4.5 billion revenue passenger miles. Each figure rose by 1.1 percentage points, and the annual figure represents an all-time record for Canada's biggest airline.

 

      As for future plans for 2013, Air Canada intends to launch its new low-cost carrier, Rouge, in the summer, while WestJet plans to break into the short-haul market with its new regional entrant, Encore, in mid-June. Looks like both  Air Canada and WestJet should brace for a dramatic year in 2013!

     I believe that the fact that load factors are on the increase is a positive indication in terms of the direction the Canadian economy is going especially considering government cuts. Happy flying Canada!

 
To read more on this article click here 

Show us the money Starbucks!~

 

Coffee chain Starbucks has given in to pressure from United Kingdom lawmakers, campaigners and consumers and has agreed to pay more UK corporation tax, after a public outcry over how little it pays. Starbucks, along with other multinational companies like Google and Amazon, pays very little tax in Britain, despite making substantial sales there.

 

Managing director of Starbucks UK, Kris Engskov, announced that the company would pay "a significant amount of tax during 2013 and 2014, regardless of whether the company is profitable".The extra taxes could amount to 20 million pounds over the next two years. Starbucks has paid £8.6m in corporation tax in its 14 years of trading in the UK, and for the past three years Starbucks has paid no corporation tax in Britain despite telling investors that the local business was highly profitable, while reporting an actual loss. The company had UK sales of nearly £400m in 2011 but has reported a taxable profit only once in its 15 years of operating in the UK.

 

So even though Starbucks have done nothing illegal - they have behaved immorally; morals are always subjective, but clearly a lot of their former customers are unhappy with their behaviour and have boycotted their stores. In Chapter six, we all studied Corporate Social Responsibility, and even though they claim to be socially responsible, they haven't done their duty of paying taxes like a good global citizen. Much harm is done in the world by people/organizations behaving legally but immorally.

 

Trouble brewing over Starbucks' UK taxes

 

                                   

 

Starbucks has joined the growing roll call of big high street names reportedly paying virtually no tax in the UK

 

 

 

Fun Size iPad~

        

        Last Friday Apple Inc. launched its new iPad mini which attracted many crowds worldwide, from Tokyo to New York. Similar to previous Apple product launches, opening day had people lining up for hours or even days. A few hundred people lined up at Apple’s Fifth Avenue store in New York just days after the city was destroyed by one of the biggest storms to ever hit the United States, Hurricane Sandy. Due to the super storm however Apple had to delay the store’s opening time to 10 a.m. for this launch which was previously 8 a.m. Surprisingly many Asian consumers were excited to get their hands on the 7.9-inch slate. There were massive queues of 200 or more outside Apple stores in Tokyo and Seoul when the device went on sale.

  In attempts to retain premium position, Apple priced their new device at $329 for a WiFi only model. This price is a lot costlier than predicted. Some other competitors include: Amazon’s $199 Kindle Fire and Google’s Nexus 7, both products are priced relatively similar to the iPad. Today, apple reported that it sold three million iPads in the first three days of its launch of the iPad mini and fourth-generation model iPad.

I’m super impressed at Apple’s ingenuity for squeezing the iPad’s basic features into a smaller component that can be easily used on the go. However I do feel that Apple might be losing their creative visionary and they might not be able to continue ahead of the pack. 

                                              

                             Apple- Introducing iPad mini

A beautiful screen, fast and fluid performance, FaceTime and iSight cameras, over 275,000 amazing apps,and 10-hour battery life make iPad mini every inch an iPad.

LINK:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/49652443 

Introduction

Hey ya'll its Jill,

Bubbles is awesome!~

YAY!~