The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday, April 25, edition that Scotia Capital's Phil Hardie recommends a "barbell approach" to investing in Canadian diversified financial companies, balancing quality defensive investments with attractive value opportunities. The Globe's David Leeder writes that Mr. Hardie says in a note: "Rising uncertainties and tariff-related risks have strengthened our conviction in the barbell approach we recommended heading into 2025. We prefer stocks with relatively low valuations that offer attractive returns with upside driven by a combination of earnings, book value, or NAV growth and dividend yields. Stocks under our coverage with quality-defensive attributes have unsurprisingly generated some of the strongest outperformance through 2025. While expected returns for our quality defensive names are narrowing, a 'winning by not losing' strategy may still have merit at this point of the cycle. ... [We] believe value-oriented names offer the biggest upside opportunities over the coming 12 to 18 months." Mr. Hardie has reiterated his "sector perform" call for First National Financial. He gave his share target a $1 trim to $44. Analysts on average target the shares at $43.60.