Canada needs to promote greater competition among businesses by modernizing its laws, the country's antitrust regulator said on Thursday, citing a study of data from 2000 to 2020, Reuters reported. The study found that competitive intensity, a measure of how hard businesses feel they need to work to gain advantage over competitors, had fallen.

Congress is ramping up its scrutiny of the crypto world after reports that Hamas received funding from digital currencies, YahooFinance.com reported. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) applied some new pressure on Tuesday with a letter to the White House and Treasury asking for a "plan" to "prevent the use of crypto for the financing of terrorism." The letter was a response to reports that militants behind the attack on Israel received large amounts of crypto as financing.

Canada will take steps in the coming weeks to ease a rental-unit shortage exacerbated by Airbnb and other short-term rental platforms, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Freeland said that the government is examining options to ensure more short-term rentals become available as long-term rentals. Canada, where population growth is exceeding the pace of housing construction, is the latest country to tackle the problem.

More Canadian firms see inflation easing over the next two years than in the previous quarter, while the business outlook fell to its lowest level since the pandemic, the Bank of Canada said on Monday in a third-quarter survey, Reuters reported. About a third of firms expect a recession over the coming year, the same level as the previous quarter, the survey said. The Bank of Canada has hiked rates 10 times since early 2022 to fight inflation but left rates at 5% at its Sept. 6 meeting, and noted the economy had entered a period of weaker growth. Its next policy decision is due on Oct. 25.

Mexico’s central bank is open to starting interest rate cuts in mid-2024, later than analysts expect, as a strong local economy complicates its inflation fight, a prominent board member said in an interview, Bloomberg News reported. Analysts are correct in penciling in the start of Banco de Mexico’s monetary easing no earlier than the first quarter of 2024, Jonathan Heath said in an interview on Friday.

Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said the inflation rate remains too high but there are clear signs that aggressive interest-rate hikes are reducing demand, Bloomberg News reported. Policymakers remain concerned that they aren’t seeing “downward momentum” in core inflation measures, Macklem told reporters Friday, adding that his governing council is focused on analyzing how a slowing economy will influence price pressures in the future.

The Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) will decide later this year if it should eliminate Imperial Pacific International (IPI) from its casino plans. It may not have to wait, though, as two new lawsuits in Hong Kong want the company to be deemed insolvent, Casino.org reported.

A U.S. bankruptcy court judge granted SAS AB’s request to speed the process of paying $3 million to advisers of the Scandinavian airline’s investor group, keeping its restructuring on track over opposition from creditor Apollo Global Management Inc., Bloomberg News reported. Judge Michael E. Wiles set an Oct. 12 hearing on a motion to expedite reimbursement to advisers to the group led by Air France-KLM and Castlelake LP, who are set to take control of SAS as it exits from chapter 11 protection.

Deutsche Bank AG squared off against the U.S. parent company of Lehman Brothers in a London court this week, hoping to squeeze more money from obscure notes issued by the long-dead bank’s U.K. arm, Bloomberg News reported. The German lender argued that it should be paid money recovered from the U.K. unit ahead of the company’s U.S. parent. Deutsche Bank is leading the case as a holder of a certain type of junior security issued from Lehman’s European unit.

About 4,300 unionized workers went on strike at three General Motors plants in Canada on Tuesday, boosting pressure on the automaker grappling with a U.S. union work stoppage now in its fourth week, Reuters reported. The walkout by workers came after Canadian union Unifor said GM was "stubbornly refusing" to match the contract the labor union reached with Ford Motor, which offered wage increases of up to 25% in Canada.