To facilitate the ongoing process to sell its businesses, DCL Corporation (DCL or the Company), a leading manufacturer and reseller of color pigments, announced that on Dec. 20, its U.S.-based subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for a court-supervised reorganization under chapter 11 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, according to a press release. Contemporaneously, the company and its Canadian subsidiaries have also commenced court-supervised restructuring proceedings in Canada under the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, R.S.C. 1985, c.
Canada
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Now that the Cirque du Soleil has rebounded from its near-death experience during the pandemic, Duncan Fisher can wax philosophical about the wild roller-coaster ride the Montreal-based circus company went through over the past few years, the Montréal Gazette reported. “It was the worst, then it developed into the best time of my business career,” Fisher said in an interview Wednesday. The vice president of operations and general manager of the touring show division of the Cirque du Soleil paraphrased Charles Dickens, saying it was both the best of times and the worst of times.
A Sault-area aerospace firm hopes to emerge from insolvency under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act through the sale of the company by April, CTVNorthernOntario.ca reported. Springer, an aircraft maintenance company in Echo Bay, has been open since 1972 and employs 100 people. It occupies about 210 acres and includes three hangers and an airport that includes a main runway that is large enough to accommodate Boeing 737s for landing and takeoff, according to court documents filed under the CCAA process. Like a lot of businesses, it was hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Canada’s inflation rate decelerated in November, but key gauges of underlying price pressures trended higher, increasing the likelihood of the central bank raising interest rates again, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index rose 6.8% from a year ago, higher than economist expectations of 6.7% and down from 6.9% in October, Statistics Canada reported Wednesday in Ottawa. On a monthly basis, the index gained 0.1% in November, exceeding forecasts for no change.
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The number of vacant jobs in Canada fell for the first time since the pandemic, easing from record highs in a possible turning point for the country’s labor market, Bloomberg News reported. Openings fell 3.3% on a seasonally adjusted basis to 959,615 in the third quarter, Statistics Canada reported Monday. That’s probably the first quarterly decline in vacancies in more than two years, though the agency didn’t collect figures in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The Bank of Canada's rapid-fire rate hikes are starting to slow the economy, the governor said on Monday, but while the bank wants to avoid a recession, there is a risk sticky inflation will require "much higher" rates, Reuters reported. Speaking to business leaders in Vancouver, Governor Tiff Macklem said the tightening had "begun to work" but would take time to feed through the economy. The bank lifted rates at a record pace of 400 basis points in nine months to 4.25% - a level last seen in January 2008 - to tame inflation that was 6.9% in October.
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Canada’s banking regulator said the country’s mortgage stress test has helped prevent widespread defaults as interest rates rose this year, rebuffing calls to weaken or eliminate the measure amid a surge in homebuying costs, Bloomberg News reported. The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions requires banks to ensure that borrowers can still qualify for their mortgages at a rate two percentage points higher than what the lender is offering, or 5.25% — whichever rate is higher at the time.
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Canada's biggest pension fund, CPP Investments, has ended its effort to study investment opportunities in the volatile crypto market, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The reasons behind CPPI's abandonment of crypto research were not immediately clear. CPPI declined to comment but said it has made no direct investments in crypto. It referred to previous comments on cryptocurrency by its CEO, John Graham, in which he sounded a note of caution.
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The Bank of Canada said decisions about future interest-rate increases will be guided by incoming economic data, though it’s still ready to move aggressively if needed, Bloomberg News reported. Deputy Governor Sharon Kozicki, in a speech Thursday in Montreal, said policymakers expect adjustments to monetary policy will be “more data-dependent,” but kept the possibility of larger hikes on the table. “If we are surprised on the upside, we are still prepared to be forceful,” Kozicki said.
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The Bank of Canada raised interest rates aggressively for a sixth straight time, while opening the door to pausing its hiking cycle, Bloomberg News reported. Policymakers led by Governor Tiff Macklem increased the benchmark overnight lending rate by 50 basis points to 4.25% on Wednesday, the highest since the beginning of 2008. The move was in line with the expectations of a slim majority of economists in a Bloomberg survey.
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