North America

Grupo Televisa SAB is in talks to join forces with Univision Communications Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, a deal that could more formally unite the Spanish-language media giants after a long partnership, Bloomberg News reported. With discussions at an early stage, no final decision has been made and talks could fall through. The two sides are still discussing the structure of a potential transaction and which parts of the businesses could merge.

Ontario plans to sell more short-term debt in the year ahead to keep borrowing costs in check amid a spike in long-term yields, Bloomberg News reported. The Canadian province, which is the world’s largest sub-sovereign government borrower, plans to increase short-term debt by C$6 billion ($4.8 billion) in the fiscal year starting April 1. That’s six times its net issuance in the current fiscal year, according to budget documents released on Wednesday.

The Bank of Canada provided the greatest guidance yet into how it plans to slow purchases of government bonds as the economic recovery accelerates, fueling expectations it could begin doing so as soon as April, Bloomberg News reported. In a speech on Tuesday, Deputy Governor Toni Gravelle said that the central bank is winding down emergency liquidity programs it deployed to grease markets when the coronavirus hit last year, including programs to buy provincial and corporate debt.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd agreed on Sunday to acquire Kansas City Southern in a $25 billion cash-and-stock deal to create the first railway spanning the United States, Mexico and Canada, standing to benefit from a pick-up in trade, Reuters reported. It would be the largest ever combination of North American railways by transaction value. It comes amid a recovery in supply chains that were disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and follows the ratification of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) last year that removed the threat of trade tensions that had escalated under former U.S.

Canada’s Just Energy said on Tuesday it had applied to voluntarily delist its shares from the Toronto Stock Exchange after the electricity and gas provider filed for bankruptcy last week, Reuters reported. On March 9, the company filed for creditor protection in Canada and said it planned to do the same in the United States due to massive costs from the Texas deep freeze. It became the second Texas electricity company to take that step in the face of extraordinary electricity charges during the cold snap.

Rogers Communications Inc. said on Monday it was buying Shaw Communications Inc for about C$20 billion ($16.02 billion) in a deal that would create Canada’s second-largest cellular and cable operator but might attract stiff regulatory scrutiny, Reuters reported. By acquiring fourth-ranked Shaw, Rogers would leapfrog Telus Corp. and take on market leader BCE Inc in the highly competitive Canadian telecommunications industry.

Canadian automation company Promation had been banking on a weaker currency to help it win a new U.S. contract, but a slower pace of vaccinations in Canada could erase that competitive edge, President Darryl Spector said, Reuters reported. Pandemic travel restrictions make it harder for Promation’s technicians to travel across the border to service and repair plant equipment, a drawback when competing against an increasingly vaccinated U.S. workforce. “With a fully vaccinated U.S. supply base, why buy from Canada if you can’t access the labor to support it?,” said Spector.

U.S. private equity firm Blackstone in 2016 unplugged a Texas power plant that it owned from the state’s grid in a bet that it could make a fortune as the only American-based generator selling electricity exclusively to Mexico. That bet has gone south, Reuters reported. Nearly five years later, Blackstone’s gas-fired plant, Frontera Holdings LLC, is struggling to exit bankruptcy after burning investors holding nearly $1 billion of its debt - the victim of a succession of problems ranging from a power market collapse in Mexico in 2020 to last month’s severe cold snap.

Cryptocurrency investment platform Cred Inc. unwittingly put a convicted financial criminal identified by the U.K. as a fugitive in charge of raising and deploying the firm’s capital before its collapse into bankruptcy, a court-appointed examiner said, the Wall Street Journal reported. An examiner’s report filed Monday in the U.S.