Cross Border Pro

Stormtech Opens Retail Store in Ferndale

Stormtech, a Canadian clothing company has opened a retail store in the Grandview Industrial park near Ferndale, Washington.  Stormtech has been in Canada for 25 years and is known for their fleece jackets.  I have personally owned one for five or six years and it still looks like new.  Stormtech already had a 50,000sqft warehouse facility in Whatcom County to serve the U.S. market and has opened this 750sqft retail outlet attached to the facility to sell discountinued stock.

Canadian Companies Listed on U.S. Stock Exchanges

Often when I am searching on the internet for Canadian companies that operate in the U.S. I will come across a publicly traded company with a Headquarters listed as an address near the border in Washington that I know to be a mailbox type service.  Often, on further research I will discover a Canadian fax number or the corporate bio will state the company was originally founded in Canada.  I find in amusing that companies will go to the trouble to establish a U.S. presence with a U.S. address, telephone number, etc yet will often retain a Canadian fax number.

These days may be coming to an end for many of these Canadian companies. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act passed some time ago.  I believe it was in the wake of Enron and Worldcom.  Sarbanes-Oxley has been phasing in over the last several years and apparently small-cap companies are starting to be effected by this.  Sarbanes-Oxley has onerous reporting and auditing requirements in an attempt to prevent more corporate scandals.  For small companies the cost of these additional requirements can be difficult to handle.  The is also affecting Canadian companies that are publicly listed and is causing many to reconsider the benefits of U.S. listing compared to the increased reporting costs.  I think we will see fewer Canadian companies choosing to access the U.S. money market through public listing and will probably see some smaller Canadian companies deregister from the U.S. Security and Exchange Commision.

Couche-Tard Makes Major Acquisition In The U.S.

"Convenience store giant Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. has made its second- biggest acquisition in the United States since entering the market five years ago, buying 236 gas stations in four U.S. states.

Analysts hailed the deal as a positive move for Couche-Tard, North America's second-largest convenience store operator, with more than 5,200 stores. It will increase its density in some of its top US markets - Orlando and Tampa in Florida, Baton Rouge, La. and Memphis, Tenn. - and give it 71 stores in Denver, Colo., a new market for the Laval, Qc.-based firm."

Read more at National Post

Passport Requirement Delayed

The U.S. House of Representatives has recently passed legislation that will delay the passport requirement at United States land borders until 2009.  The passport requirement for arrival by air will still go into effect January 2007.  This move seems to indicate that the U.S. understands the burden this requirement would have placed on other countries and also on U.S. border towns.  Government officials and business groups in U.S. border towns lobbied hard to get the passport requirement delayed over fears that restricting movement across the border would hinder tourism and dampen cross border commercial trade.

I think this is a good move as it will give all parties involved a change to come up with an efficient system that will both meet security requirements and ease movement across the border.