North America

Bankruptcies are on the rise in Canada as government supports end and businesses grapple with a challenging post-pandemic recovery featuring soaring costs, supply chain issues and a labour shortage, YahooFinance.com reported. The number of businesses that filed for insolvency in the first quarter of the year jumped 33.8 per cent compared to 2021, according to statistics released by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada. A total of 807 businesses filed for bankruptcy in the quarter, up 10.1 per cent from the previous three months.

Chinese conglomerate HNA Group Co. must pay its former business partner SL Green Realty Corp. about $185 million in a dispute over a bankrupt Manhattan skyscraper, an arbitrator said, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The arbitrator, former judge L. Priscilla Hall, found that real-estate investment trust SL Green was entitled to a $184.6 million payment over an investment that it made in HNA Group’s 245 Park Ave., according to documents made public in a New York state court on Friday. SL Green should also be reimbursed for $856,000 in fees, she said.

Mexican annual inflation eased slightly in the first half of May compared to the previous two-week period, but inflationary pressures remained well above the central bank's target, official data showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Headline inflation dipped to 7.58% in early May from 7.65% during the last two weeks of April, the latest figures published by national statistics agency INEGI showed. A Reuters poll of economists had forecast a rate of 7.60%. Compared with the previous two-week period, consumer prices fell 0.06% during the first half of May, INEGI said.

Mexican inflation is forecast to have slowed in the first half of May, although still far above central bank targets, a Reuters poll showed on Friday, reinforcing expectations of continued interest rate hikes through the rest of the year. The median forecast of 10 analysts surveyed was for annual consumer price inflation to have dropped to 7.58% in the first half of May, down from 7.65% in the second half of April. Annual core inflation, which strips out some volatile food and energy items, was seen at 7.22%, down slightly from 7.27% in the previous two weeks.

Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Friday defended the central bank as inflation spikes to a three-decade high and the frontrunner to take over the opposition Conservative Party pledges to fire the Bank of Canada governor if elected, Reuters reported. "It is clear to us all that we are living through a period of global volatility. We have COVID. We have the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have China's zero-COVID policy," Freeland told reporters by teleconference from Munich, Germany after a G7 meeting.

Business bankruptcies in Canada moved closer to pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2022, jumping almost 34 per cent year-over-year in what some experts warn could be the start of a growing wave of failures, the Niagra Falls Review reported. There were 807 business bankruptcies and proposals in Q1, up from 733 in the previous quarter and 603 in the first quarter of 2021.

Air Canada sees higher-margin business travel coming "quite close" to pre-pandemic levels by as early as September, in the latest encouraging sign for the once hard-hit sector, a top executive told Reuters. Globally, business travel has lagged leisure in bouncing back from a COVID-19-induced slump, but airlines say it is now rebounding in North America as offices reopen and COVID restrictions ease. Corporate travel is important for airlines because of demand from frequent flyers and appetite for higher-margin premium fares.

Before Bill Hwang sent a slate of stocks on a manic climb last year, he had already started bleeding billions of dollars on a bearish bet after seeking Morgan Stanley’s help, Bloomberg News reported. It’s an untold chapter that played out just before Hwang’s famously bullish trades came tumbling down in early 2021, wiping out his Archegos Capital Management and leading to criminal charges.

The Bank of Canada's policy rate, at 1%, is "too stimulative" given soaring inflation and needs to return to more neutral levels "quickly," an official said on Thursday, while downplaying the likelihood of a supersized increase, Reuters reported. Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle, speaking to economists in Montreal, also said the central bank would likely revise up its near-term inflation projections, as the "perfect storm" of global and domestic price increases continue to persist.