Peter Hadekel

Why do companies fail? And what can be done to turn them around before it is too late? While these are common questions in the business world, the responses frequently are inadequate and the lessons of failure are not always taken to heart. In a capitalist economy built on risk and reward, business failures are bound to occur and are a…

Canadian business history offers few examples of successful manufacturing companies that have conquered the world. There’s Bombardier in aerospace and mass transit, Magna in auto parts and McCain in frozen food (if you count pizza and fries as manufactured goods). The list in technology is particularly slim. Nortel Networks sat atop the telecom industry for a…

Ted Rogers exercises enormous power over Canada’s communications industry; as such, he deserves the attention he gets in High Wire Act: Ted Rogers and the Empire That Debt Built, an exhaustively researched biography by financial journalist Caroline Van Hasselt. He is the fourth most wealthy Canadian, as ranked by Canadian Business …

Wade Rowland joins a growing crowd of writers anxious to prosecute and convict the modern business corporation for a multitude of crimes against humanity. His provocatively titled book—Greed, Inc.: Why Corporations Rule Our World and How We Let It Happen—echoes themes raised by critics such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein and Linda McQuaig who decry the global spread of corporate values and…

The Bronfmans have long occupied a larger-than-life place in the Canadian imagination. The lore surrounding the late whiskey merchant Sam Bronfman and his rough-hewn ways inspired Mordecai Richler to write perhaps his most ambitious novel, Solomon Gursky Was Here. The family’s mystique was such that journalist Peter C. Newman once labelled them “The Rothschilds of the New World.” Canadians regarded the wealthy and powerful Bronfmans with a mixture of fascination and…