BUSINESS in BRIEF

Foreigners bought $7.2B in June securities

OTTAWA -- Statistics Canada says non-residents bought $7.2 billion in Canadian securities in June, while Canadians sold $9.5 billion in foreign stocks, bonds and short-term paper.
The foreign purchases, which were mostly bonds, finished a record second quarter investment of $27.6 billion.
The agency says Canadians sold off securities in the face of a troubled U.S. credit market and lacklustre global equity markets.
In June, Canadians sold $2.9 billion worth of foreign bonds, $475 million in short-term paper and $6.2 billion in stocks, continuing a sell-off that began more than six months ago.

Canadian economy loses 55,200 jobs in July

OTTAWA -- Canada's economy lost 55,200 jobs in July compared to the previous month with many people leaving the work force -- the worst single-month drop since the recession of the early 1990s.
Statistics Canada also reported on August 8 a dip in the national unemployment rate to 6.1 percent from 6.2 percent in June. That's because many people -- especially younger part-time workers -- left the workforce.
Most of the job losses, which totalled 48,000 in July, came from part-time positions in the manufacturing, business building, and support and educational services sectors.
Employment across the country grew by 1.3 percent over the past year, but the pace of growth has slowed sharply in recent months. Job gains have averaged only 10,000 a month so far in 2008, compared with an average monthly gain of 30,000 in 2007.

Nortel Q2 net loss US$113M as revenue rises

TORONTO -- Nortel Networks Corp has reported a second-quarter net loss of US$113 million in a "challenging business environment," compared with a year-ago loss of $37 million.
The Toronto-headquartered telecommunications equipment maker, reporting in U.S. dollars, said August 1 its revenue was up two percent from a year earlier at $2.62 billion.
The latest quarter included $67 million in restructuring charges and $21 million in mark-to-market losses on interest rate swaps, partly offset by a foreign-exchange gain of $34 million.
Orders in the quarter totalled $2.15 billion, down from $2.68 billion a year ago, "primarily impacted by lower CDMA orders in North America and lower orders from the LG-Nortel joint venture," the company stated.

BCE earnings slide ahead of buyout

TORONTO -- BCE Inc saw a steep slide in second-quarter profit ahead of the company's pending $35-billion buyout.
Toronto-based BCE, Canada's largest telecommunications company, earned $361 million, or 45 cents a share, in the quarter, compared with $667 million, or 83 cents a share, from the year-earlier period.
The company said its earnings per share in the second quarter of 2007 included a gain from Bell Aliant's sale of Aliant Directory Services and a favourable tax settlement totalled 36 cents a share.
A net addition of 111,000 postpaid wireless subscribers helped drive up total revenue 1.7 percent to $3.7 billion. It was the biggest quarterly gain in BCE's wireless business in over two years.
BCE has been undergoing a deep restructuring ahead of the company being taken private by a consortium of new owners led by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan.
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Housing starts slow sharply

TORONTO -- Housing starts slowed much more sharply than expected in July, as the fevered pace of condo and other multiple-unit dwelling construction in Ontario cooled, at least briefly, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp said August 11.
Starts came in at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 186,500 units, down from a revised 215,900 units in June, and were substantially below an average forecast by economists of 210,000 for July.
This is just the fourth time since January 2003 that this rate has come in at below 200,000 units, the most recent occasion being in December of last year, CMHC statistics show.
The housing agency released its data as figures from Statistics Canada showed that new-housing prices increased at their slowest pace in more than six years in June ­ 3.5 perent year over year, compared with 4.1 percent in May. This continued a slowdown that started in September, 2006, and Statscan attributed the latest leg to a softening market in Western Canada.