With the strategic investment, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, the Quebec’s public pension fund manager joins other leading investors in the eighth-largest stock exchange operator globally by value of shares traded every day. (The Logic)
The Memphis, Tenn.-based financial institution will hold deposits and issue debit cards for U.S. merchants using the e-commerce giant’s new Balance feature. Stripe is also launching a new set of APIs that allows its clients to offer their customers accounts and other services with Goldman Sachs in the U.S. and Citibank and Barclays internationally. (The Wall Street Journal, The Logic)
The two firms expect the cash and stock transaction to close in the first quarter of 2021. Affirm declined to comment on whether it would maintain PayBright as a separate brand, or keep its engineering and other staff in Canada. (The Logic)
Hg Capital’s purchase values Benevity—a grant- and donation-management platform—at US$1 billion. Neither company disclosed the terms of the deal. (The Globe and Mail)
The pension fund’s investment arm led a US$20-million Series A round of funding for ultimate.ai, a Helsinki- and Berlin-based startup that uses artificial intelligence to build virtual customer service agents. Silicon Valley’s Felicis Ventures and the Berlin-based fund HV Capital also participated in the round. (TechCrunch)
Businesses with fewer than 100 employees made up over four-fifths of enterprises receiving support from federal government programs to support business innovation and growth in 2018, said Statistics Canada. Those businesses received 45.8 per cent of the total value of support. (The Logic)
In a 17-page lawsuit, the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division said the social media company did not sufficiently advertise at least 2,600 jobs between 2018 and 2019 that ended up being filled by immigrants on H-1B visas, while Facebook was applying to sponsor the employees for green cards. (The Wall Street Journal)
Scott Morrison used the Chinese messaging platform, owned by Shenzhen-based tech conglomerate Tencent, to appeal to its over one billion users about a doctored image shared on Twitter by a top Chinese Communist Party official. Morrison said in his now-deleted post that the tweet “does not diminish our respect and appreciation of our Chinese Australian community or indeed our friendship with the people of China.” (News.Com.Au)
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she expects the first batch of COVID-19 vaccines could be administered as soon as December 8, calling it “without a shadow of a doubt the best news we have heard since the pandemic started.” (BBC)
The Montreal-based firm is paying US$123 million in cash and issuing new shares for the balance for the Providence-based company, whose technology is used by 7,000 food-service locations in the U.S. The transaction also triggered a change in Lightspeed’s share structure, converting CEO Dax Dasilva’s multiple-voting shares into regular single-vote shares. (The Logic)