Headlines

Latam Airlines Group’s chief executive wants to steer his company out of bankruptcy next year with a shrinking carbon footprint and lower costs that can help it grow in a travel market still recovering from the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg News reported. Roberto Alvo said that Latin America’s largest air carrier is making progress on a financing plan that it will submit to a judge next month, putting it on track to exit bankruptcy protection as soon as the first half of 2022.

Mexico's Grupo Posadas has filed for chapter 11 protection in a U.S. court, the hotel chain said yesterday after its business was hit by the global coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reported. The pre-packaged chapter 11, filed in the Southern District of New York, is expected to be complete in about 60 days, Posadas, one of Mexico's biggest hotel groups, said in a statement to the Mexican stock exchange.

European Union countries failed to agree on a bloc-wide response to surging energy prices in an emergency meeting of government ministers on Tuesday, with some countries seeking a regulatory overhaul and others firmly opposed, Reuters reported. European gas prices have hit record highs this autumn and remain at lofty levels, prompting most EU countries to respond with emergency measures like price caps and subsidies to help trim consumer energy bills.

Chile’s Senate Constitution Committee approved a proposal for a fourth round of early pension withdrawals that would pump as much as $20 billion into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, Bloomberg News reported. The committee voted 3 to 2 in favor of legislation on Tuesday despite growing opposition to the measure. The bill now moves to the Senate floor, where it faces difficult odds of passing. Three prior rounds of withdrawals have injected some $49 billion into the economy, buoying consumption and inflation amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Morocco's draft 2022 budget projects a 9% rise in total spending to 519 billion dirhams ($57 billion) according to Finance Ministry documents officially made public on Tuesday after headline deficit and growth forecasts were announced last week, Reuters reported. The budget plan aims to spur economic recovery amid the pandemic and boost spending on public investment, education, health and social welfare, Finance Minister Nadia Fettah Alaoui told reporters.

Britain has experienced a series of shortages these past few months, from a lack of fuel at gas stations to not enough workers picking the fall harvest, but Treasury chief Rishi Sunak is unlikely to dwell on them when he delivers his annual budget statement on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, as he is formally known, will instead likely use one of the most high-profile, choreographed events in the country’s political calendar to paint a relatively rosy picture of the state of the British economy following the devastating shock of the pandemic.

Creditors of China's HNA Group have voted to approve the company's restructuring plan, according to a court comment posted on HNA's official WeChat page on Saturday, Reuters reported. The court in China's southern island of Hainan, where the group is based, said the vote had been conducted in accordance with the country's bankruptcy laws. HNA was placed in bankruptcy administration in February and a working group was created by the Hainan government to address the company's liquidity problems.

China Evergrande Group said that construction is progressing at some of its residential projects in southern China, as the highly indebted developer tries to stave off collapse and deliver the homes it has promised to more than a million people, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The number of companies and freelancers (PFA) that went insolvent in the first nine months this year (January-September) increased by 6.9% compared to the same period in 2020 to 4,307, according to Romanian National Office of the Trade Register (ONRC) data quoted by Agerpres, Romania-Insider.com reported. Most companies and PFAs that went insolvent were in Bucharest, respectively 797, decreasing by 9.64% y/y.

British Brexit minister David Frost said on Monday that the European Union's proposals to solve the problem of trade involving Northern Ireland did not go far enough and significant gaps remained between the two sides, Reuters reported. The two sides are in negotiations to find a common solution to issues with the part of a Brexit deal that governs trade between Britain, British province Northern Ireland, and EU member Ireland. Earlier this month, the European Union presented proposals to fix those issues. "The problem with them is that they don't go far enough.