Headlines

At the same time the cost of living is creeping ever higher, so too are the number of insolvency filings from Canadian consumers, the Toronto Star reported. Data released by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada shows that the number of Canadians filing for personal bankruptcy may be returning to pre-pandemic levels. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, government subsidies have kept consumer debt at bay resulting in fewer bankruptcies or consumer proposals, a process where a person in debt pays a smaller percentage of owed money to their creditors.

Sergio Camacho, the chief executive of Unifin Financiera SAB de CV, was sick of the questions about the financial health of his firm, the largest shadow lender in Mexico, and he was out of patience, Bloomberg News reported. Unifin was doing well, he blurted out, and would grow its business and thrive. “The market has been irrational,” Camacho barked at one investor after cutting him off during the firm’s earnings call last month.

Thousands of Ukrainians are picking up shattered lives and trying to start over, many creating small businesses that they hope will bring them and their new communities fresh purpose, the New York Times reported. Others are working jobs that are a step down from positions lost because of war, grasping lifelines to keep their families afloat. “The Russian invasion has spurred a lot of people to pull up and start building new businesses,” said Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, which has become a locus for people fleeing the war-torn east.

New Zealand home prices fell on an annual basis for the first time in 11 years in July, adding to signs of a slowdown for the global economy as central bankers worldwide try to tame inflation, the Wall Street Journal reported. The national median sale price of 810,000 New Zealand dollars, equivalent to $519,000, was 1.8% lower than a year earlier, cooled by higher interest rates and lending restrictions, the country’s real-estate institute said Thursday. It was the first annual fall in prices since July 2011.

Annual inflation in Denmark came at 8.7% last month — rising at the fastest pace since 1983 — while the figure in neighboring Norway reached 6.8%, authorities said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Statistics Denmark said the price of goods has increased by an average of 13.2% in the past year, the highest annual increase since February 1982, when the annual increase was the same. Within the goods category, it is to a very large extent price increases on food, electricity, fuel and gas.

Estonia is suffering the worst inflation in the euro area, with consumer prices rising at an annual rate of nearly 22 percent, the Washington Post reported. This tiny Baltic nation, and its neighbors, Latvia and Lithuania, represent extreme examples of the price pressures sweeping Europe and confronting policymakers, executives and consumers with a challenge unseen for 40 years. Some Estonian employers must raise salaries several times each year. Others are retooling their operations to use less energy.

Ecuador plans to pay off a debt it owes to French oil company Perenco at the end of this year and is open to a dialogue to determine how the payment should be made, the country's economy minister said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Ecuador is obliged to pay compensation to Perenco after the World Bank's International Centre for Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled the country had unlawfully ended a production-sharing agreement with Perenco and owed it $391 million including interest.

The Central Bank of Kuwait raised its discount rate by 25 basis points to 2.75% effective from Thursday, it said in a statement on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The decision was in response to inflationary pressures, bank Governor Basel al-Haroon said in the statement. The bank had also increased the rate by 25 bps on July 27, after a 75 bps hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve. All Gulf countries have their currencies pegged to the dollar except Kuwait, which pegs its dinar to a currency basket including the dollar.

LATAM Airlines Group hopes to exit chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the last quarter of 2022 after securing the financing plus U.S. bankruptcy court and shareholder approval for its restructuring plan, says Group Chief Executive Officer Roberto Alvo, ch-aviation.com reported. "We have closed the second quarter with significant progress in our reorganization process under Chapter 11, and we hope to emerge from it during the last quarter of this year, Alvo said in a statement.

Credit Suisse Group AG has applied to the English High Court to initiate formal legal proceedings against Japan's SoftBank Group Corp. over a $440 million dispute, one source familiar with the matter said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Switzerland's second-largest bank is trying to recover funds that Greensill Capital, a defunct finance firm, had lent to Katerra, a SoftBank-backed U.S. construction group that filed for bankruptcy last year.