Microsoft Corp. is launching a new family caregiver benefit for all employees.
To date, the benefit has rolled out in 22 countries, including in the United States last week. The company will extend the benefit to the remaining countries where it operates, including Canada, over the coming months.
The family caregiver leave allows an employee to take up to four week of fully paid leave to care for an immediate family member with a serious health condition, wrote Kathleen Hogan, executive vice-president of human resources at Microsoft, on her LinkedIn page. Read more 
Provisus Monthly Insight – July 2017
COMMODITIES BOTTOM OUT – Typically, commodity prices go through longer bear market cycles compared to bull market cycles while the opposite is usually true for stock prices. While Canadian equity markets are slightly off the record highs set in February 2017, commodities, relatively speaking, are dirt cheap. In fact, they are basically the cheapest they have been since the all-time high was reached in June 2008. Commodity prices have fallen 56.9%, based upon the decline in the S&P GSCI Commodity Index over the past 9 years.
Click here to read more: Monthly Insight – July 2017 – Commodities Bottom Out
DM Summer Newsletter 2017
FOCUS ON INTRINSIC GROWTH, LET PRICE FOLLOW – In presentations to clients and prospective clients, we spend significant time discussing company cash flow and why this metric is so important within our investment process. From our perspective, firms that are generating (and especially growing) excess cash have a relatively quantifiable intrinsic value and don’t require us to rely as much on possible future corporate developments for investment return, events which regularly fall short of market expectations.
Click here to read more: DM-Monthly-Report-Summer-17
What Non-Retirees Mean for the Workforce
The decision of 72-year-old railway executive Hunter Harrison to pursue a challenging new gig instead of retirement is emblematic of the changing shape of the workforce
For all Hunter Harrison’s unquestionable talents, he is really bad at one thing: not working. The celebrated railway executive officially retired from Canadian National Railway Company (CN) in 2009, after a long career running railways. A little more than two years later, at the encouragement of activist investor Bill Ackman, Harrison came out of retirement to become president and CEO of Canadian Pacific Railway (CP). Read more
