Canadian stock market closes flat

The Canadian stock market closed flat on Tuesday as a decline in gold-mining shares offset gains in the information technology and healthcare sectors. The Toronto Stock Exchange's benchmark S&P/TSX Composite Index edged down 0.07 point to 13361.71, little changed from Monday's closing. Though major corporate developments in the energy, tech and healthcare sectors gave some boost to the market, these gains were offset by the fall in the gold sector. The gold sector led decliners, down almost 1 percent as bullion prices slumped. Goldcorp Inc. lost 0.46 percent to 25.97 Canadian dollars a share, and Kinross Gold dropped 1.15 percent to 5.18 Canadian dollars per share. Shares of Encana Corp. soared following the Canadian natural gas giant's announcement that it would create a new public company targeting western Alberta province and would slash its workforce by 20 percent. Its stock gained 3.34 percent to 19.21 Canadian dollars apiece. Shares in Open Text increased more than 10 percent to 85.32 Canadian dollars as the software company unveiled its plan to acquire the U.S.-based cloud-technology provider GXS Group in a cash-and-stock deal valued at approximately 1.17 billion U.S. dollars. In the health sector, shares in Montreal-based Canadian pharmaceutical company Paladin Labs Inc. rocketed almost 50 percent on reports that U.S. pharmaceutical company Endo Health Solutions Inc. agreed to buy the company at a cost of about 1.6 billion U.S. dollars. The energy sector was little changed, while December crude oil on the New York Mercantile Exchange lost 1.32 percent to 93.37 U.S. dollars a barrel. The Canadian dollar closed at 0.9564 U.S. dollar at 5 p.m. local time (2100 GMT), down from 0.9594 U.S. dollar on Monday.