Attorneys for Sung Kook “Bill” Hwang are expected to argue that prosecutors are pushing a novel and nonsensical market manipulation theory when the criminal trial of the former Archegos Capital Management boss kicks off in New York this month, Reuters reported. Archegos, a $36 billion family office which invested Hwang's personal wealth, collapsed spectacularly in March 2021 after its highly leveraged bets on a small number of stocks via complex derivatives quickly soured.

The American investment firm 777 Partners, whose bid to buy the English Premier League soccer team Everton has been on hold for months amid doubts about the company’s finances, was accused by one of its lenders on Friday of running a yearslong fraud scheme worth hundreds of millions of dollars, the New York Times reported. The accusation came in a lawsuit filed Friday in federal court in New York by Leadenhall Capital Partners, a London-based asset management company.

Business insolvencies in Canada are hitting their highest point since the Great Recession, new data show, the Globe and Mail reported. According to the federal Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy, 2,003 business insolvencies were filed from Jan. 1 to March 31 of this year. Of those, 1,599 were bankruptcies and 404 were proposals, which is a legal option to negotiate lower debt repayment with creditors. The number of insolvencies was up 32 per cent from the previous quarter, and 87 per cent from the same quarter last year.

A Nova Scotia judge received good news Tuesday during an update on the proposed sale of SaltWire Network Inc. and The Halifax Herald Ltd., two financially troubled companies that operate Atlantic Canada's largest newspaper chain, the Canadian Press reported. Those shepherding the restructuring process told Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice John Keith that progress is being made toward securing a deal that could see all or part of the insolvent businesses sold to one or more bidders.

Canada’s economy lost momentum after a strong start to the year and is tracking below the central bank’s latest forecast, supporting expectations a first cut to interest rates could come before summer, the Wall Street Journal reported. Preliminary data suggest gross domestic product, a broad measure of goods and services produced across the economy, was essentially unchanged in March, Statistics Canada said Tuesday. That follows 0.2% growth in February GDP from the month before to 2.218 trillion Canadian dollars, the equivalent of $1.624 trillion.

Mexico's economy grew 0.2% in the first quarter compared to the previous three-month period, a preliminary estimate from the national statistics agency showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Compared with the same quarter a year earlier, the economy grew 1.6%, the statistics agency said. Read more.

Laurentian University's board of governors has approved a budget of just over $201.7 million for the 2024-25 fiscal year with $8 million being set aside to enact recommendations to bring the university up to modern operating standards following its insolvency, CBC.ca reported. The university declared insolvency in February 2021; the first public post-secondary institution to choose federal legislation meant to restructure commercial enterprises in financial crisis. As a result of restructuring, 69 undergraduate and graduate programs and 195 faculty positions were cut at Laurentian.

Bank of Canada officials said monetary policy easing is expected to be “gradual,” as they debate the timing of a pivot to rate cuts, Bloomberg News reported.

Canadian consumers haven’t tightened their belts this much in nearly a year, and there are no signs of spending growth since the start of 2024, Bloomberg News reported. Receipts for retailers were unchanged in March, according to an advance estimate from Statistics Canada released Wednesday. That followed a 0.1% drop in February. Taken together with the 0.3% plunge in January sales, the figures point to a flat reading in the first three months of the year, the weakest pace since the second quarter of 2023.