Hashtag Trending – Spotify goes public, BMO to open tech campus, Equifax breach hits millions more customers

Spotify goes public, the Bank of Montreal will open a tech campus in Toronto’s Eaton Centre, and Equifax reveals millions more people were affected by its data breach last year.

First up from Facebook is news that music streaming service Spotify has officially filed for an initial public offering. This IPO is one of the most anticipated filings of the year and interestingly, Spotify will list all its shares directly on the New York Stock Exchange instead of going through a major investment bank, which is usually the typical move. The Stockholm, Sweden-based company has around 71 million paid subscribers globally and millions more free listeners. Shares are likely to go as high as $132.50, giving the company a valuation of over $23 billion.

Next from Twitter, the Bank of Montreal has revealed that it will be taking over the four-story former Sears Canada store at the Eaton Centre in Toronto to build an urban tech campus. The project is meant to attract high-tech talent so it can get ideas to market quicker and will include open floorplans, collaborative work areas, and easy underground PATH access to the subway and other BMO locations. When it opens in 2021, the campus will be home to approximately 3,500 employees. While BMO declined to reveal how much it will spend on the space, it’s just the latest move within the talent-starved tech industry in Canada to compete for highly skilled workers. Scotiabank opened a digital factory last year to attract such skill, and RBC is opening an innovation lab in Montreal this year as well.

And last but not least from Reddit, the Equifax is the breach that just keeps on giving. If you recall, the credit reporting company experienced a massive data breach last year and now it’s saying that an extra 2.4 million people were affected, bringing the overall total to just shy of 150 million customers globally. Equifax says these consumers were not previously identified because only their partial driver’s license information was exposed. Its interim CEO emphasizes in a statement that this is not a case of them discovering new stolen data, but them overlooking some in their initial investigation when the hack was publicly disclosed in September. The company is under federal investigation in the US, as well as several class action lawsuits.

Hashtag Trending is produced by IT World Canada. Today’s episode is sponsored by Cogeco Peer 1, the company that enables businesses to unlock their IT potential. Learn more at CP1.com.

If you enjoy Hashtag Trending, please be sure to give us a rating and a review on Amazon, Apple Podcasts, Google Play, or wherever else you get your podcasts from.

Hashtag Trending on Amazon Alexa Subscribe to Hashtag Trending on Google Play Subscribe to Hashtag Trending on Apple iTunes

Would you recommend this article?

Share

Thanks for taking the time to let us know what you think of this article!
We'd love to hear your opinion about this or any other story you read in our publication.


Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

Featured Download

Mandy Kovacs
Mandy Kovacshttp://www.itwc.ca
Mandy is a lineup editor at CTV News. A former staffer at IT World Canada, she's now contributing as a part-time podcast host on Hashtag Trending. She is a Carleton University journalism graduate with extensive experience in the B2B market. When not writing about tech, you can find her active on Twitter following political news and sports, and preparing for her future as a cat lady.

Featured Story

How the CTO can Maintain Cloud Momentum Across the Enterprise

Embracing cloud is easy for some individuals. But embedding widespread cloud adoption at the enterprise level is...

Related Tech News

Get ITBusiness Delivered

Our experienced team of journalists brings you engaging content targeted to IT professionals and line-of-business executives delivered directly to your inbox.

Featured Tech Jobs