Take our business and investing news quiz for the week ending Oct. 16

d. Gosh, who knew banks were so woke? TD and BMO are among nine lenders identified by the Washington-based Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as having “denied, debanked and discriminated” against right-wing U.S. customers and businesses. U.S. President Donald Trump requested an investigation into the alleged discrimination last year and, miracle of miracles, the report landed this week, just before crucial midterm elections in the United States. There is, of course, no political calculation in any of this.

c. Fairfax, an asset manager and insurer led by billionaire Prem Watsa, is taking on another bank turnaround by acquiring control of India’s IDBI Bank. The deal ranks as the largest foreign investment ever made in the country’s financial service sector. Fairfax has previously made significant profits by taking stakes in troubled banks in Ireland and Greece.

a. Kristalina Georgieva, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said that governments of wealthy nations must act promptly to bring their borrowing under control. She said the United States in particular needs to take urgent action to rein in its more than US$40-trillion in national debt. While leaders in Washington recognize the problem, their preferred solution of relying on strong growth to lift the U.S. economy out of its debt hole isn’t enough, she warned.

b. U.S. inflation accelerated. The Consumer Price Index for September climbed to a level 3.7 per cent higher than it was 12 months prior, following a 3.4 per cent increase in August. The disappointing figure delivers another blow to U.S. President Donald Trump and his Republican Party ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections. It also makes it increasingly likely that the Federal Reserve will boost interest rates later this month.

c. French fry giant McCain Foods is buying a 450-employee potato-processing business from Falcon Group, a family-controlled Indian conglomerate. The business is located in Gujarat, a state in northwestern India. McCain began operating in India in 1998.

d. Backers of the project aim to build a demonstration facility, dubbed a Transportable Nuclear Power Plant. It would be the first floating nuclear plant in a G7 country, as well as the developer’s first commercial deployment. It would also be the first nuclear project majority-owned by First Nations.

a. An engineer at OpenAI has been charged with installing the recording device in what officials said was an effort to capture sensitive conversations about the company’s technology. The employee has been identified as a 35-year-old Saudi national named Abdulrahman Alfozan.

b. Netflix is laying off 6 per cent of its work force, or roughly 1,000 employees, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. The cuts are the company’s biggest since 2022. Netflix is facing tough competition for viewers from legacy rivals and YouTube.

b. Ms. Carney, an Oxford-trained economist and climate change expert, arrived in Halifax this week on her first trip there as Canada’s Ocean Envoy, ahead of an international conference that she will chair in the city next spring. She was named as the country’s first ocean envoy in September. Her role is unpaid.

c. An analysis by researchers at the C.D. Howe Institute found that Canadians’ ability to save and repay debt is sharply divided across income and generational lines. While households in the top 20 per cent of earners saved about a third of their disposable income last year, those in the bottom 60 per cent were spending beyond their incomes, according to the report.

d. When is a deal not a deal? Ask Cliffs. It bought Stelco for $3.4-billion in 2024. To win federal government approval, Cliffs agreed to legally binding conditions, including a provision that it maintain at least the same number of unionized employees in Canada for five years. Now it’s arguing that the agreement doesn’t really apply because…well, stuff happens.

a. Somebody (or something) maliciously broke into internet-connected refrigeration controllers and cranked fridges and freezers at stores across France up to as high as 50 C, spoiling millions of euros worth of food. In some stores, the higher temperatures started fires or even melted equipment. More than 500 shops were affected.