Canada's annual inflation rate eased more than expected in December as gas prices came down but core measures remained little changed from the previous month, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday, making another interest rate hike this month likely, Reuters reported. Inflation slowed to 6.3% in December from 6.8% in November, a notch lower than the 6.4% median forecast of analysts. Prices fell 0.6% from the previous month, again showing price pressures easing more than analysts' forecast for a 0.5% decline.
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Canada’s banking industry regulator will consider limiting how much firms are able to lend to riskier homebuyers as part of a review intended to safeguard the financial system from a housing slump, Bloomberg News reported. The regulator is proposing restrictions on the volume of mortgages made available to those who are seeking to borrow amounts that are far in excess on their incomes. It’s part of a regular consultation on residential mortgage underwriting standards, which started Thursday.
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The number of Canadians filing for insolvency is approaching pre-pandemic levels, according to numbers from the federal Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, CBC.ca reported. Insolvency rates dropped during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Michelle Statz, a Saskatchewan-based licensed insolvency trustee with Bromwich+Smith, says that November 2022 saw the highest number of insolvencies since March 2020, the month that saw COVID-19 lockdowns and the announcement of the initial Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB).
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Canada posted a trade deficit of C$41 million ($30.20 million) in November as exports were dragged down by energy products, while pharmaceuticals and other consumer goods drove a decline in imports, Statistics Canada said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The deficit missed analysts' forecast of a C$610 million surplus in November. Statscan also revised October's surplus down to C$130 million from an initial C$1.21 billion. Inflation hit a four-decade high last year that prompted the Bank of Canada to raised rates at a record pace to tame prices.
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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.