Headlines

Brazilian sugar and ethanol producer Raizen said on Wednesday that it had reached an out-of-court agreement with creditors and bondholders to restructure approximately 65.1 billion reais ($12.61 billion) in debt obligations, Reuters reported. The joint venture between oil ​major Shell and Brazilian conglomerate Cosan had been in months-long talks seeking ways to strengthen ​its capital structure and tackle its significant debt burden. Raizen said in a securities filing ⁠that creditors holding 47% of its unsecured debt had already endorsed the plan.

Brazil has seen an increase in the volume of judicial restructurings, including those involving large business groups, BNAmericas.com reported. The number of companies in Brazil under bankruptcy protection reached 5.680 at the end of 2025, compared with a total of 4.233 companies, according to data from RGF Associados, a company specialized in judicial recovery. Currently, the interest rate in Brazil is at 15%, the highest level since mid-2006, amid the Central Bank’s attempt to keep inflation within the target set by the monetary authority.

The boss of a collapsed £2bn shadow bank has been accused of using a network of fake companies to steal money from the company’s creditors, The Telegraph reported. Paresh Raja, the founder of Market Financial Solutions (MFS) is alleged to have used eight companies to extract money from creditors on false pretences, a legal filing from a creditor group alleges. The creditors claimed that while the eight were purported by MFS to be “genuine borrowers” they were in fact “closely connected with” MFS.

MEPs voted on Wednesday to support the 267 workers made redundant after Tupperware Belgium closed down following bankruptcy, according to a European Parliament press release. A Commission proposal to mobilise €1.6 million from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund for Displaced Workers (EGF) to support 267 workers laid off following the bankruptcy and closure of Tupperware Belgium in February 2025 won Parliament’s support on Wednesday. The decision was adopted by 562 votes in favour and 53 against, with 19 abstentions.

Sturgeon County Mayor Alanna Hnatiw hopes an ongoing provincial viability review on the Town of Gibbons can prevent similar cases in the future, CBC.ca reported. At a county meeting Tuesday, councillors heard from members of a team representing the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, on what the viability review would look like. The review is meant to help residents and the government decide whether Gibbons should remain a town, or if it should dissolve into Sturgeon County. Gibbons is one of five municipalities that exist within the boundaries of Sturgeon County, north of Edmonton.

Turkey’s central bank held borrowing costs on Thursday and flagged that it could tighten interest rates should inflation rise further as war in the Middle East drives up energy prices, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Central Bank of Turkey held its benchmark one-week repo rate at 37.0%. Investors put slightly more chance of a hike than a hold, according to LSEG data ahead of the decision. In January, the bank cut its key rate for a fifth meeting in a row to 37.0% from 38.0%.

Canada will ​look at ways to increase its crude production to help global efforts to stabilize oil ‌prices in the face of the Iran war, Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The Canadian government is talking to the country's oil producers about delaying planned maintenance projects at oil sands facilities in order to temporarily increase output, Hodgson ​told reporters in Ottawa.

The European Union should only accept new U.S. ​tariffs that recreate the ‌substance of the deal agreed between the two sides in Scotland ​last year, the chair of ​the European Parliament's trade committee ⁠said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Bernd Lange ​said that Washington's launch of new 'Section 301' investigations ​into unfair trade practices had been expected, but they provided no clear ​commitment from the U.S. ​administration to uphold the terms of the ‌agreement ⁠struck at U.S. President Donald Trump's Turnberry golf course.

The Trump administration on Wednesday announced a new trade investigation into unfair trading practices by 16 of America’s largest trading partners, as it works to resurrect a system of tariffs recently struck down by the Supreme Court, the New York Times reported. The trade investigation will look into what the administration called “excess capacity” in the factory sectors of foreign countries, which it said had resulted in overproduction and large and persistent U.S. trade deficits with those nations.

Headline inflation in the Irish economy remained near 3 per cent in February but this was before the shock to energy prices triggered by US-Israel-led war in Iran, the Irish Times reported. Consumer prices rose by 2.7 per cent over the 12 months to February, unchanged from the previous month, as rising food and housing costs offset falls in the cost of transport and household furnishings.