The Canada Development Corporation was a Canadian corporation, based in Toronto, created and partly owned by the federal government and charged with developing and maintaining Canadian-controlled companies in the private sector through a mixture of public and private investment. It was technically not a crown corporation as it was intended to generate a profit and was created with the intention that, eventually, the government would own no more than 10% of its holdings; it did not require approvals of the Governor-in-Council for its activities and did not report to parliament. Its objectives and capitalization, however, were set out by parliament and any changes to its objects decided upon by the Board of Directors had to be approved by parliament. [1] [2]
The CDC was created as a result of Walter Gordon's Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects, and the 1968 Watkins Report commissioned by Gordon, in an attempt to redress the problem of foreign ownership in the Canadian economy by stimulating the development of Canadian owned corporations, particularly in the field of natural resources and industry. [3] [4] [5]
About 31,000 private shareholders invested in the corporation. [2] An early purchase of the corporation was Connaught Laboratories, the original manufacturer of insulin. [6]
Major investments owned by the CDC included holdings in petroleum, mines and petrochemicals [2] including Polymer Corporation, an asset transferred to it by the Canadian government. By 1982 the Canadian government had a 49% stake in the CDC. [7]
In 1986 the Corporation was dismantled as part of the Mulroney government's program of privatization. [2] [8]
The International Finance Corporation (IFC) is an international financial institution that offers investment, advisory, and asset-management services to encourage private-sector development in less developed countries. The IFC is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States.
Global Affairs Canada is the department of the Government of Canada that manages Canada's diplomatic and consular relations, promotes Canadian international trade, and leads Canada's international development and humanitarian assistance. It is also responsible for maintaining Canadian government offices abroad with diplomatic and consular status on behalf of all government departments.
Power Corporation of Canada is a management and holding company that focuses on financial services in North America, Europe and Asia. Its core holdings are insurance, retirement, wealth management and investment management, including a portfolio of alternative investment platforms.
BCE Inc., an abbreviation of its full name Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., is a publicly traded Canadian holding company for Bell Canada, which includes telecommunications providers and various mass media assets under its subsidiary Bell Media Inc. Founded through a corporate reorganization in 1983, when Bell Canada, Northern Telecom, and other related companies all became subsidiaries of Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., it is one of Canada's largest corporations. The company is headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the Verdun borough of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Royal Bank of Canada is a Canadian multinational financial services company and the largest bank in Canada by market capitalization. The bank serves over 17 million clients and has more than 89,000 employees worldwide. Founded in 1864 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, it maintains a corporate headquarters in Toronto and its head office in Montreal. RBC's institution number is 003. In November 2017, RBC was added to the Financial Stability Board's list of global systemically important banks.
TD Waterhouse Canada Inc. is a Canadian financial services corporation headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, that is a wholly owned subsidiary of Toronto-Dominion Bank. The company does business through several divisions, TD Direct Investing, TD Wealth Financial Planning, and TD Wealth Private Investment Advice. The TD Waterhouse brand was also formerly used for TD's American and British brokerages.
A privately held company is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets but rather the company's stock is offered, owned, traded, exchanged privately, or over-the-counter. In the case of a closed corporation, there are relatively few shareholders or company members. Related terms are a closely held corporation, unquoted company, and unlisted company.
Export Development Canada is Canada's export credit agency and a state-owned enterprise wholly owned by the Government of Canada. Its mandate is to support and develop trade between Canada and other countries, and help Canada's competitiveness in the international marketplace.
The 2006 sale of the Shinawatra family's share of Shin Corporation (ShinCorp) to Temasek Holdings caused great controversy in Thailand. The sale was in response to long-standing criticisms that the Shinawatra family's holdings created a conflict of interest for Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Criticisms of the sale focused on the insistence by Thaksin and a compliant government that the transaction was exempt from capital gains tax, the fact that the Thai company was sold to a Singaporean company, and the fact that the Thai law regarding foreign investments in the telecom sector had been amended just prior to the sale. Thaksin's sale also impacted holdings, among other parties, of the Crown Property Bureau that had an investment in Siam Commercial Bank that held ShinCorp stock.
The Shareholder Executive (ShEx) was a body within the UK Government responsible for managing the government's financial interest in a range of state-owned businesses for commercial rather than political interests. It was part of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and staffed by civil servants, many of whom were corporate finance professionals with private sector experience. It was led by Mark Russell as Chief Executive at the time of its closure.
Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) is an Albertan Crown corporation and institutional investor established to manage several public funds and pensions headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta. AIMCo was established by an act of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta in 2008 under the government of Progressive Conservative Premier Ed Stelmach.
Crown corporations in Canada are government organizations with a mixture of commercial and public-policy objectives. They are directly and wholly owned by the Crown.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, operating as CPP Investments, is a Canadian Crown corporation established by way of the 1997 Canada Pension Plan Investment Board Act to oversee and invest the funds contributed to and held by the Canada Pension Plan (CPP).
The Foreign Investment Review Agency (FIRA) was established by the Canadian Parliament in 1973 to ensure that the foreign acquisition and establishment of businesses in Canada was beneficial to the country. The Foreign Investment Review Act that created the agency was the culmination of a series of government reports and debates. The 1957 report of the Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects (known as the Gordon Commission) firmly planted foreign investment on the political agenda. Next, the 1968 Watkins report (known formally as Foreign Ownership and the Structure of Canadian Industry), called for a national policy capable of handling Canada's interests in the age of the multinational corporation.
Actis is a global investment firm focused on the private equity, energy, infrastructure, and real estate asset classes.
British International Investment, is the development finance institution of the UK government. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is responsible for the organisation, and is the sole shareholder. It has an investment portfolio valued around US$7.1 billion and since 2011 is focused on the emerging markets of South Asia and Africa.
The Uganda Development Corporation (UDC) is an agency of the government of Uganda. It promotes and facilitates the industrial and economic development of Uganda. Formed in 1952, it had some success in promoting local industrial development and was swelled with the addition of newly nationalised industries in the early 1970s. These, however, proved too much for the corporation, and it went into a slow decline before being completely phased out in 1998. The organisation was reconstituted with similar aims in 2008.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund is Russia's sovereign wealth fund established in 2011 by the Russian government to make investments in companies of high-growth sectors of the Russian economy. Its mandate is to co-invest alongside the world's largest institutional investors, direct investment funds, sovereign wealth funds and leading companies.
Edper Investments Ltd. was the primary holding company and investment vehicle for brothers Edward Bronfman and Peter Bronfman between 1959 and 1995. At its peak in the 1980s, and early 1990s, Edper was one of the largest corporate conglomerates in Canada, controlling more than 500 private and publicly traded companies in a complex structure that was estimated to be worth $100 billion, employed more than 100,000 Canadians, and comprised 15% of the total capitalization of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The Connaught Medical Research Laboratories was a non-commercial public health entity established by Dr. John G. FitzGerald in 1914 in Toronto to produce the diphtheria antitoxin. Contemporaneously, the institution was likened to the Pasteur Institutes in France and Belgium and the Lister Institute in London. It expanded significantly after the discovery of insulin at the University of Toronto in 1921, manufacturing and distributing insulin at cost in Canada and overseas. Its non-commercial mandate mediated commercial interests and kept the medication accessible. In the 1930s, methodological advances at Connaught updated the international standard for insulin production.