Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce plans to appeal a New York judge's order that it pay about $848 million in damages to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, in a contract dispute tied to the 2008 global financial crisis, Reuters reported. In a statement on Wednesday, the Toronto-based bank said it expects to take a C$1.16 billion pre-tax charge, or about C$850 million ($629 million) after taxes, in its first-quarter results, reducing its ratio of capital to assets.
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Canadian manufacturing activity contracted at a slightly faster rate in December as an uncertain economic outlook and high inflation undercut demand, while the recent trend of easing cost pressures reversed, data showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The S&P Global Canada Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) fell to a seasonally adjusted 49.2 in December from 49.6 in November. It was the fifth straight month that the index was below the 50 threshold that marks contraction in the sector.
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Calgary-based Swimco has returned to physical retail locations with an eye towards expanding to more stores in the future, CBC reported. It comes more than two years after the company went bankrupt, closing all of its locations across Canada after 45 years in business. At its peak, Swimco had 25 stores across Canada. Two stores opened on Boxing Day this year — one in Calgary and one in Edmonton — something the swimwear company's owner Dave Bacon said brought him "joy and relief….
An unusual number of cannabis companies have used a Canadian corporate insolvency law called the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA) in 2022, a trend that demonstrates both the marijuana industry’s financial challenges and one possible solution to keep businesses from slipping completely underwater, MJBizDaily reported. Fourteen of the 35 CCAA filings in Canada – or 40% – between Jan. 1 and Dec. 22 have involved companies operating in the cannabis space in one way or another.
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.
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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