Binance Holdings Ltd.’s attempt to turn the page on costly regulatory violations faces a test in Thailand, where the world’s largest crypto exchange will soon start a new trading venue with one of Asia’s richest men, Bloomberg News reported. The venture with Sarath Ratanavadi’s Gulf Energy Development Pcl recently received the required licenses, but Binance’s guilty plea last week and $4.3 billion in penalties for US anti-money laundering and sanctions contraventions have cast a shadow over the planned domestic digital-asset platform.

The cost of shipping fuels such as diesel across the Atlantic has soared to an almost 16-month high amid ongoing disruption at the Panama Canal, Bloomberg News reported. Shipping through the vital waterway — a shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans — has suffered as an El Nino-fueled drought reduced water levels to an unprecedented low. That’s prompting shipping companies to pay large sums to jump ahead in queues or sail thousands of extra miles around South America.

Canada’s real-estate sector, once among the hottest in the world and a key driver of the country’s economy, is seeing some cracks, the Wall Street Journal reported. Several major real-estate developers are defaulting on loans, buyers are having trouble closing on units, and dozens of condominium projects are being shelved. The effects could linger for years, turning housing, once the engine that drove the Canadian economy, into a brake that stalls growth, say developers, real-estate brokers and economists. “It’s bad,” said Daniel Foch, a Toronto-based real-estate broker and analyst.

An involuntary bankruptcy against Mexico’s TV Azteca has been dismissed, with a bankruptcy-court judge saying that the multimedia conglomerate and its bondholders are involved in a dispute that must play out in U.S. district court, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. TV Azteca had been sued over missed payments to bondholders in a case in district court, and then earlier this year an involuntary bankruptcy petition was filed by a group of bondholders in bankruptcy court.

A Nova Scotia home heating fuel company that filed for bankruptcy last week has accused an accounting firm of negligence, saying it was hit with a "crippling shortfall" of nearly $10 million after being led to believe it was making money, CBC.ca reported. Maritime Fuels Ltd. declared bankruptcy last week, leaving in the lurch an unknown number of customers who had prepaid for their winter home heating fuel.

Consumer prices in Canada rose at the slowest pace since June, a reassuring sign for central bank policymakers that rates are now high enough to significantly cool inflation pressures, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index increased 3.1% in October from a year ago, following a 3.8% increase in September, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday in Ottawa. That matched the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The deceleration was largely a result of lower prices for gasoline, while the largest contributors to the increase remain mortgage interest cost, groceries and rent.

After several years of persistently low commodity prices driving a wave of corporate insolvencies, bankruptcy professionals in Alberta say that it's become increasingly rare to see these companies fail, CBC.ca reported. The financial rebound is providing relief for the province's orphaned-well problem. Fewer companies becoming insolvent means fewer companies abandoning their assets, which can become environmental and safety hazards. When a single company fails, it can result in thousands of oil and gas wells, in addition to hundreds of facilities and pipelines, that no longer have an owner.

Canada's financial watchdog said on Monday it was seeking feedback on the public disclosure of cryptocurrency assets by federally regulated financial institutions, joining global regulators in ramping up scrutiny on the volatile sector, Reuters reported. The consultation by Canada's Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) comes after the agency in July proposed new guidelines for crypto assets citing a risky environment.

Monetary policy in Canada wouldn’t be as restrictive if elected officials had restrained their spending in recent years, according to economists at the Bank of Nova Scotia, Bloomberg News reported. Roughly 200 basis points of interest rate tightening stems from the combined program spending and consumption by Canada’s federal and provincial governments since the pandemic, Scotiabank economists Jean-François Perrault and Rene Lalonde wrote in a report to investors.

Canadian home sales fell in October by the most in 16 months as higher borrowing costs continued to keep buyers on the sidelines, data from the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) showed on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Canadian home sales fell 5.6% in October from September, the fourth straight month of declines and the biggest since June 2022. On an annual basis, without adjustment for seasonal variation, sales were up 0.9%. "We're only in November, but it appears many would-be home buyers have already gone into hibernation," Larry Cerqua, Chair of CREA, said in a statement.