TSX perseveres in volatile decade

It certainly has been an eventful 10 years in Canadian business. From the lows of the tech bubble bursting, to the highs of the powerful loonie and the commodity boom, investors rode quite a roller-coaster over the past decade, as this 10-year stock chart of the Toronto stock market's S&P/TSX Composite Index shows.

We've singled out some of our favourite takeovers, scandals and corporate successes during that time. But it's an admittedly incomplete list, so be sure to leave a comment and tell us your thoughts on major events of the last decade in business and how they factored into the markets. Or how they had an impact on the lives of Canadians.

Scroll down for our brief descriptions of some of the market-moving events of the 2000s.

1. Nortel Networks Corp. stock hits an all-time high price of $124.50 per share. At the time the darling of Canadian business, Nortel went from being the most heavily weighted stock on Toronto's exchange through numerous corporate scandals, earnings restatements and stock splits before being ultimately delisted from the exchange in June 2009 due to bankruptcy proceedings.
2. The Toronto Stock Exchange's key index dropped 291 points, or four per cent, in 71 minutes of activity before closing on the day of the attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. When the market reopened two days later, the benchmark Canadian index shed 11.3 per cent more over the following 10 days.
3. Oilpatch firms PanCanadian Energy Inc. and Alberta Energy Co. merge to form EnCana Corp. The energy titan would grow to briefly become Canada's largest company during the energy boom. In late 2009, the natural gas company spun its oil assets out into a stand-alone company, and the natural gas division was rumoured to be a takeover target.
4. The World Health Organization advises against all but essential travel to Toronto, noting that the city's outbreak of SARS, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, appears to be the worst in the world outside China. Local officials worked to mitigate the damage, but the impact of the SARS crisis on the local and national economies was in the billions of dollars, according to recent estimates.
5. The Hollinger International newspaper chain removes Conrad Black as its chairman and announces a $200-million-US lawsuit against Black and associate David Radler over alleged financial irregularities.
6. Canadian miner Inco Ltd. launches a takeover play for rival Falconbridge Ltd., kicking off a round of consolidation in the industry. Inco itself would eventually be taken over byBralizian rival Vale, andover the next 18 months, miners Xstrata PLC, Phelps Dodge Corp., BHP Billiton Ltd., Rio Tinto Group, Teck Cominco Ltd. and others spent hundreds of billions trying to capitalize on a seemingly never-ending boom in commodity prices by launching hostile takeovers for each other.
7. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty gives income trust investors the fright of a lifetime by announcing Ottawa's intention of imposing a tax on income trusts. Even though the rules largely wouldn't come into effect until 2011, the news devastated the sector.
8. The Canadian dollar hit a level that seemed unthinkable for so long: parity with the U.S. greenback for the first time in almost 31 years. It soon retreated before repeatedly eclipsing the U.S. dollar's value over the next two years.
9. EnCana unseats Royal Bank as Canada's largest company by market capitalization. As happens with most other companies to have briefly claimed the top spot (Research In Motion Ltd., Potash Corp. and Nortel Networks Inc., to name a few) it didn't stay there for very long.
10. A planned $50-billion purchase of telecom giant BCE Inc. by private-equity funds CPP and Teachers falls apart after auditor KPMG refuses to verify the solvency of the company after its privatization. The deal valued the company at $42.75 a share, but when the buyout fell apart, billions in shareholder value was wiped out.
11. Chrysler Group LLC obtains bankruptcy protection. General Motors Corp. would follow on June 1, capping months of concern about the future of the industry. The U.S., Canadian and Ontario governments took direct equity stakes in the auto industry in an attempt to keep the key sector solvent.