Monday’s near misses
The chase by Greg Bonnell:

M & A Monday has an interesting flavour today – tales of near completions, near misses and a ‘let’s take a third run at this thing.’

Let’s start with Nevada neighbours Barrick and Newmont. Reports are swirling the miners have been in room together looking to combine the world’s two largest gold producers. Word is the talks broke off, but could ramp up again. BNN commodities guru Andrew Bell has this one in hand.

In another case of “we were talking but it didn’t work out” – reports say pharmaceutical giant Pfizer held talks to buy London-based AstraZeneca, which makes asthma and heart drugs. According to those same reports, the talks went cold several months ago and the two aren’t talking right now.

And Telus is making a third bid to acquire Mobilicity, after twice being shot down by Industry Canada. The parties say things are different this time, but will James Moore agree? This news broke late Thursday, just before the long weekend. I started in print, where the saying goes, “if it breaks on the weekend it breaks again Monday morning.” That said, there’s plenty to talk about here, what with Ottawa’s push for greater competition in the wireless space. A worthy Monday morning yarn.

Another weekend eye catching headline… Keystone XL… delayed… again. We’ve got all the details and context on BNN today.

And we have earnings, lots of earnings. It’s going to be a busy week for quarterly reports, and it’s already begun. Haliburton beat the street in the first quarter, with double-digit growth in its operations on the other side of the world (the technical term is ‘eastern hemisphere’). Hasbro beat the street as well with the toy-maker citing, among other things, a good showing for My Little Pony.

Despite selling something everybody needs, among other things, Kimberly-Clark’s first quarter revenue came in a light, but it did manage to hand in a penny beat on the bottom line. Inflation and currency rates are troubling the TP maker.

We have some heavyweights here at home and stateside reporting after the bell, including Rogers and Netflix.

On the global economic front, Japan’s trade deficit widened in March as the country saw its weakest export growth in a year. Overseas shipments expanded 1.8%, while exports jumped some 18%.

It’s still a holiday for markets in much of the world, but not here. Futures are pointing to an open in the green in New York after North American equity indices made solid gains last week despite some choppy, choppy trading days.

Plenty of excitement to come, so stayed tuned.

Every morning Business Day Host Frances Horodelski writes a "chase note" to BNN's editorial staff listing the stories and events that will be in the spotlight that day. In Frances' absence, today's note was written by Greg Bonnell. Click here to have it delivered to your inbox before the trading day begins.