Money

Walgreens is moving forward with closing 200 stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands. The move is part of a three-year plan to reduce costs by $1.5 billion following Walgreens’ December merger with Switzerland’s Alliance Boots GmbH.

Future Shop stores across Canada are closing effective immediately, to the shock of customers and dismay of hundreds of employees losing full and part-time jobs.

A $1.6M Home is Uninhabitable? Nine years after a Florham Park man bought his dream home, he has still not been able to move in. Humayun Akhtar bought the home in 2006 for $1.6 million in part of a new Florham Park development. Soon after, a plumber noticed cracks in the foundation. Engineering experts told Akhtar the house is literally …

La Vie en Rose will buy Bikini Village for an undisclosed sum and continue to run the chain under the two seperate brand names.

Florida island for sale in Charlotte Harbor. So real estate agent Klaus Lang is asking potential buyers to “present your best offers” on the 104-acre island with a mansion and guest house. In Internet advertisements, he notes that the sellers have owned the island for 26 years, but circumstances have arisen that require them to sell immediately.

Costco Canada has had its fish import licence suspended by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).

A new program at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU) in the Lower Mainland is hoping to create buzz in B.C.’s agriculture. The university will introduce B.C.’s first commercial beekeeping program in January, and by November 2016 its graduates will have the skills to work in, manage and grow existing beekeeping operations or establish and grow their own diversified cottage beekeeping business …

The end appears to have arrived for several Target Canada stores that are scheduled to be closed starting next week through March 22.

Rogers Communications Inc., Canada’s biggest wireless carrier, missed out on getting new airwaves in a government auction that favored smaller companies. Telus Corp., BCE Inc., Quebecor Inc. and Wind Mobile, the brand name of Globalive Wireless Management Corp., all won spectrum in the auction that netted the government $2.1 billion.

Canadians are once again proving they have an insatiable appetite for debt. Despite warnings by the Bank of Canada that the country’s economy is in for a bumpy ride this year, household debt grew by 4.6 per cent in January, a new report says. It was among the fastest pace of household credit expansion in the past two years.

For the first time in Toronto, the average price of a detached home has reached an average of more than $1 million. “Even with the record low temperatures last month, we still saw an increase in the number of people purchasing homes in the GTA,” TREB president Paul Etherington said in a release.