Archive
International News Services archives articles supplied to clients one year or more after initial publication. These articles are protected by a password and not made available to readers without permission from clients. They are used as a background resource by agency journalists. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.
HEATHER REISMAN
BY MONICA DOBIE
Heather Reisman, 52, was the President and CEO of Indigo Books, Music and Cafe, which she launched in 1996.
She had earlier co-founded Paradigm Consulting, a strategic change firm, where she remained managing director for fifteen years. Prior to starting Indigo, she spent two years as president of Canadian soft drinks giant Cott Corporation.…
HEARING AID BATTERY
BY KATE REW
ENERGIZER Holdings, Inc, of the USA has launched a groundbreaking battery dispenser for hearing aids, enabling a user to install a fresh battery directly into the hearing aid, without actually having to hold it. Easing what can be a fiddly and painstaking task, Energizer EZ Change’s new design incorporates a magnetic arm, which supposedly allows for precise placement in the hearing aid every time and eliminates the need to touch the battery.…
FAKE COUNTRY
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INTERNATIONAL Chamber of Commerce is claiming the credit for closing down an audacious cyber-scam, the creation of an entirely fictitious country that existed only on the Internet. The problem with the Republic of Port Maria, said the ICC, was that not only did it have its own website, it offered bogus offshore banking services to the unwary.…
TECHNOLOGY INDEX
BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINLAND is the world’s most technologically advanced country, according to a United Nations Development Programme, (UNDP), report, which puts the UK at number seven in its league table, also behind the USA, Sweden, Japan, South Korea and the Netherlands.…
CHAPTERS FEATURE
BY MONICA DOBIE
THE CANADIAN book sector has seen its share of turbulence in the past 12 months. Last summer Larry Stevenson, a young, successful businessman at the helm of Chapters, the country’s largest book retailer, was pondering ways in which to expand the company further.…
LARRY STEVENSON
BY MONICA DOBIE
As a young man, Larry Stevenson, now 44, served as a paratrooper in the Royal Canadian Armed Forces in peace-keeping.
He graduated from Harvard in business and formed a venture capital company called Pathfinder 1992, bought Smithbooks 1993 and then Coles 1994, merging them to create Chapters in 1995.…
THE RELATIONSHIP
BY MONICA DOBIE
The Stevenson-Reisman relationship has been strained for seven years. In 1994, the Federal Competition Bureau gave the go ahead for the Coles-Smithbooks merger that led to the creation of Chapters two years later. Eight months after the Chapters merger was completed Heather Reisman announced that she would enter the ring with US-owned Borders as a partner.…
TIME-LINE
BY MONICA DOBIE
November 28, 2000:
*Trilogy Retail Enterprises, a private company run by Gerry Schwartz and his wife Heather Reisman, announced that it would make an offer to Chapters Inc. shareholders to purchase 4,888,000 common shares of the company at a cash price of $CAN 13 per share.…
BERTELSMANN CASE
BY ALAN OSBORN
BOOK club companies must pay value added tax on the costs of delivering gifts in kind to existing customers as a reward for bringing in new business, the European Court of Justice has ruled. The judgement came in a case involving clubs operated by the German media giant Bertelsmann between 1985 and 1990 when books, records and bicycles were given to subscribers in return for the introduction of new members.…
ROYALTY FEES
BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH restaurateurs and hoteliers could be forced to pay regular fees to record companies for piping music from radio broadcasts into their premises, if the European Commission wins a legal case against the British government.
It has asked the European Court of Justice to order the UK to scrap the existing system, where no royalty fees are paid to record companies when hoteliers and restaurateurs play radio background music, free-of-charge to customers.…