Sometimes, you need to prime the pump.

After three rum-and-eggnogs over lunch, Santa merrily winked and slipped the Financial Edge his exclusive corporate Christmas list.

Here’s what’s in the bag:

Jim Shaw, Shaw’s CEO, gets a dictionary – so he can look up the word competition, legal in most jurisdictions.

Telecom combatants Jim Shaw and Telus CEO Darren Entwistle get boxing gloves – so they can compete “fair and square.”

Biovail CEO Eugene Melnyk gets boxing gloves too – for his meetings with research analysts.

Oncolytics CEO Brad Thompson gets a green light – for his company’s cancer drugs.

Gwyn Morgan, EnCana’s indefatigable CEO, gets a speechwriter for the rubber-chicken circuit.

Bob Normand, CEO of ATB Financial, gets a set of keys – to unlock the handcuffs the province has clamped on his organization, keeping it from privatization.

John Petch, the Alberta Securities Commission director of enforcement, gets a wrist slapper for wrist-slapping insider traders such as Vancouver executive Iain Harris, who was fined $50,000 and banned for six months from acting as a director or officer of a company.

Harris, Jimmy Pattison’s one-time vice-president, gets a securities rulebook (he says he misunderstood the insider trading rules).

All Canada’s securities regulators get teeth.

Hugh Campbell, Edmonton Eskimos’ CEO, gets the Grey Cup - again (sorry, Stampeders).

Ken King, Flames’ CEO, gets four playoff games.

Jimmy Pattison, CEO of the Pattison Group, gets Christmas Day off. The whole day. No deals.

Conrad Black, ex-CEO of scandal-riddled Hollinger International, gets a book about Wall Street – Pigs At The Trough.

Dick Grasso, former New York Stock Exchange pig-at-the-trough CEO, gets nothing. Geez, isn’t $140 million enough?

Eveline Charles, the Edmonton salon entrepreneur, gets the contract to give Bay Street and Wall Street an image makeover.

Calgary pro day trader and Stockscores creator Tyler Bollhorn gets a publisher to tell his story – How To Make $55,000 In One Day In Your PJs.

Frank King, ex-Calgary Olympic guru, gets a shot at ethical cleansing of the often corrupt Olympic movement.

Wrestling’s ‘rasslin’ Hart family gets peace.

Michel Fattouche, former Cell-Loc CEO, gets an IPO for a new high-tech concept – that locates Cell-Loc and other tech companies that have gone missing.

Edmonton hockey fans get another outdoor Heritage Classic – so they can freeze the other ear off.

Don Cherry gets a Christmas sock – to stuff in his mouth.

Josef Schachter, the president of Schachter Asset Management and the Edge’s stock picker of the year, gets a contrarian bow-tie.

Gold bugs get a reality check and stop-loss orders.

Gold guru John Ing of Maison Placements gets $510 US gold. Oh, that was his 2003 target? Shhhh!

Linda Cook, Shell Canada CEO, gets a meeting with all the other female oil and gas CEOs (in a phone booth).

Tim Horton’s employees get a job at Krispy Kreme – so they don’t have to explain the baked-from-frozen doughnut story to customers anymore.

Tim Horton’s co-founder Ron Joyce gets shares in Krispy Kreme (KKD-NYSE) and a fresh doughnut – from Krispy Kreme.

Don Gray, the brash CEO of Peyto Energy Trust, gets humility.

Oh, never mind – the stuffy old oilpatch needs some colour.

Bay Street gets a map of Canada so they can locate Western Canada (they lost last year’s map).

Eliot Spitzer, New York attorney general, gets handcuffs – for Wall Street’s crooks.

Wall Street gets more Eliot Spitzer.

Wall Street analysts get a private e-mail account – so Spitzer can’t embarrass them anymore.

Jacqueline Shan, CEO of CV Technologies, gets a monster contract for the company’s flu/cold-prevention products.

Sisso El-Hamamsy, rookie CEO of one-time high-tech high flyer Wi-LAN, gets 1999.

Ex-Edmontonian, ex-WorldCom CEO Bernie Ebbers gets Christmas dinner with all the shareholders that were conned by his company.

Bill Comrie, president of the Brick, gets a blockbuster deal for a chain of stores in China.

Mike Mears, CEO of The Calgary Foundation, and Doug McNally, CEO of the Edmonton Community Foundation, get sacks and sacks full of philanthropic cheques.

And to all, Merry Christmas!



HOT STOCK: SKYE RESOURCES
SKR.H-TSXV $4.25
Up $3.57 (+525.0%) on 487,102 shares (for week ending Dec. 12).
Is the Skye the limit? Perhaps. While many of the high flyers in the junior mining sector were finally in a correction mode, Skye shares blue-skied on news of an intent to purchase a nickel mine from Inco in beautiful Guatemala. The Vancouver company also named Ian Austin its CEO.



COLD STOCK: THERATECHNOLOGIES
TH-TSX $3.38
Down $1.30 (-27.8%) on 1,257,881 shares (for week ending Dec. 12).
Owning a biotech stock is like playing in a mine field as Theratechnologies shareholders found out in a big way. You never know when your shares are going to blow up. This Montreal drug developer’s stock was pounded when the company revealed its lead growth hormone technology did not improve recovery in clinical trials on elderly hip-fracture surgery patients.