Headlines

Canada’s real-estate sector, once among the hottest in the world and a key driver of the country’s economy, is seeing some cracks, the Wall Street Journal reported. Several major real-estate developers are defaulting on loans, buyers are having trouble closing on units, and dozens of condominium projects are being shelved. The effects could linger for years, turning housing, once the engine that drove the Canadian economy, into a brake that stalls growth, say developers, real-estate brokers and economists. “It’s bad,” said Daniel Foch, a Toronto-based real-estate broker and analyst.

Brazilian retailer Americanas SA reached an agreement with bank creditors to overhaul some of its debt, in a key step toward eventually exiting bankruptcy protection, Bloomberg News reported. Some 11 months after sinking into a crisis due to an accounting fraud that more than doubled its debt to 42.5 billion reais ($8.7 billion), a binding agreement was signed with creditors holding more than 35% of company’s debt, excluding intercompany credits, Americanas said in a filing Monday. Other creditors also showed interest in participating on the same deal in a non-binding way, the company said.

Chinese authorities are taking more forceful action to contain the growing financial troubles of one of the country’s biggest shadow lenders, the Wall Street Journal reported. Police in Beijing said over the weekend that they had taken “criminal coercive measures”—a euphemism for arrests—against multiple employees of Zhongzhi Enterprise. The privately held conglomerate operates several businesses that sold investment products to many wealthy individuals and companies in China, and has struggled for months to make promised payments to investors.

Profits at China's industrial firms extended gains for a third month in October, albeit at a slower pace, suggesting more policy support from Beijing is needed to help shore up growth in the world's second-largest economy, Reuters reported. The 2.7% year-on-year rise sees profit growth narrow back to single-digits, following an 11.9% increase in September and a 17.2% gain in August, putting pressure on authorities to extend further assistance to manufacturers as soft global demand continues to dog policymakers heading into 2024.

Thousands of former Wilko staff have been paid a combined more than £42 million since losing their jobs, it has been revealed, Leicester Live reported. The Leicester-founded firm collapsed earlier this year, but parts of the business have been saved by discount rivals. The news of payments was revealed by the Government’s Insolvency Service which said it had been covering redundancy pay or statutory notice pay for former Wilko staff. The historic high street chain, which was founded in Leicester, was forced to close all its stores after falling into administration in the summer.

Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey said getting inflation down to the central bank's 2% target will be "hard work" as most of its recent fall was due to the unwinding of the jump in energy costs last year, Reuters reported. "The rest of it has to be done by policy and monetary policy," Bailey said in an interview with website ChronicleLive published on Monday. "And policy is operating in what I call a restrictive way at the moment - it is restricting the economy.

Turkey’s central bank has raised interest rates to 40 percent, its highest level in nearly two decades, in a significant move to tame the country’s runaway inflation after the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had previously defied economic convention by cutting rates to slow price increases, the New York Times reported. The increase of 5 percentage points on Thursday, which was larger than expected and the sixth consecutive increase by the bank, came as inflation in Turkey is running at 61.36 percent.

An involuntary bankruptcy against Mexico’s TV Azteca has been dismissed, with a bankruptcy-court judge saying that the multimedia conglomerate and its bondholders are involved in a dispute that must play out in U.S. district court, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. TV Azteca had been sued over missed payments to bondholders in a case in district court, and then earlier this year an involuntary bankruptcy petition was filed by a group of bondholders in bankruptcy court.

Airline SAS AB received approval from a bankruptcy court in New York for a $1.2 billion rescue package that will see Air France-KLM and private equity firm Castlelake LP become owners in the Scandinavian flag-carrier, Bloomberg News reported. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022, saying it faced a significant decline in passenger demand during the Covid-19 pandemic as well as a series of pilot strikes and intense competition from low cost air carriers.

A Nova Scotia home heating fuel company that filed for bankruptcy last week has accused an accounting firm of negligence, saying it was hit with a "crippling shortfall" of nearly $10 million after being led to believe it was making money, CBC.ca reported. Maritime Fuels Ltd. declared bankruptcy last week, leaving in the lurch an unknown number of customers who had prepaid for their winter home heating fuel.