New York state lawmakers are renewing the push to overhaul the protracted and painful process of solving sovereign debt crises, Bloomberg News reported. Senator Gustavo Rivera is sponsoring amended legislation that stands to ramp up oversight on how defaulted government debt is restructured with creditors. It could also potentially limit how much investors are allowed to recoup when countries restructure their debts — a concept that’s riled up Wall Street in the past.

The mid-January deadline for businesses to qualify for partial forgiveness of pandemic loans likely played a major role in driving up business insolvencies that month, said the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the Canadian Press reported. As businesses continue to face inflation, labour shortages, higher interest rates and weakened consumer spending, for many the deadline was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Simon Gaudreault, the CFIB’s chief economist and vice-president of research. “The math just doesn’t add up anymore,” he said.

Chinese investment can’t be the solution for cash-strapped Canadian miners seeking financial backing, according to Canada’s natural resources minister, Bloomberg News reported. “We need to be working to solve access to capital issues, but the answer cannot be investment from Chinese state-owned industries,” Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Tuesday in an interview.

Panama's economy is expected to see growth slow in 2024 to 2.5%, from 7.5% in the previous year, as a result of the closure of First Quantum Minerals' lucrative copper mine in the country, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said on Monday, Reuters reported. Gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to gradually improve over the medium term, but the mine's closure does entail the permanent loss of about 0.6% of GDP in fiscal revenues and 7.5% of exports of goods and services, the IMF said. Read more.

A small Florida hedge fund that allegedly helped Indian tech firm Think & Learn Pvt hide $533 million must reveal where the money is located or face possible sanctions from a federal judge on Monday, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge John Dorsey in a Friday hearing dismissed an effort by the investment firm, Camshaft Capital Fund, to avoid answering questions about the cash. The missing money is at the heart of a fight between lenders owed $1.2 billion and Think & Learn, the education-tech startup founded by entrepreneur Byju Raveendran.

Chinese Vice President Han Zheng pledged on Friday to provide more opportunities for foreign companies in China as the government tries to restore confidence in the world's second largest economy, the Associated Press reported. Han told an audience of American business people in Beijing that the government would continue to open up more industries to foreign investment and create a market-oriented and law-based international business environment. “China’s development achievements have been made through opening up," he said at an American Chamber of Commerce in China banquet.

Canada's government said on Thursday it would invest up to C$10.5 billion ($7.74 billion) savings it has gleaned from departmental expenditures into healthcare and housing over the next three years, Reuters reported. The move is a first phase in repurposing some government spending that was announced in the 2023-24 budget. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberal government is facing calls from the opposition to cut the budget deficit, and the central bank has also warned that any new spending could delay interest rate cuts.

Some energy companies are still failing to pay millions of dollars in taxes, says a survey released this week by the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, CBC.com reported. Oil and gas producers missed $43 million in payments last year, the group says. "Year after year, the problem drags on due to a lack of industry regulation and accountability," said president Paul McLauchlin in a news release. The association found oil and gas companies owe the communities in which they operate nearly $252 million in all. That's down slightly from last year's total of $268 million.

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Wednesday told Byju’s to respond to two separate insolvency petitions filed against the troubled edtech firm by US lenders and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), the Economic Times of India reported.