Canadian mortgage investment corporations (MICs), alternative lenders that offer riskier home loans and small construction financing, are struggling to attract investors, firms and analysts said, which could increase pressure on them and spur consolidation in the sector, Reuters reported. These alternative lenders, which make up about 1.5% of Canada's mortgage market, drew investors looking for high returns as interest rates hit rock bottom in recent years. But with rates rising rapidly under a Bank of Canada tightening cycle this year, investors have sought higher-yielding, safer assets.
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Resources Per Country
- Anguilla
- Bahamas
- Barbados
- Belize
- Bermuda
- British Virgin Islands
- Canada
- Cayman Islands
- Costa Rica
- Cuba
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- El Salvador
- Grenada
- Guadeloupe
- Guatemala
- Haiti
- Honduras
- Jamaica
- Mexico
- Montserrat
- Netherlands Antilles
- Nicaragua
- Panama
- Puerto Rico
- Saint Kitts and Nevis
- Saint Lucia
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Turks and Caicos Islands
- United States
- United States Virgin Islands
Consumer price inflation cooled as gasoline prices fell by the most since the start of the pandemic, though underlying price pressures will likely push the Bank of Canada to continue delivering aggressive rate hikes, Bloomberg News reported. The consumer price index rose 7.6% in July from a year earlier, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday in Ottawa. The inflation gauge increased 0.1% from a month earlier, the seventh straight increase. Both numbers matched the median estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
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UK-based Altera Infrastructure has entered a Chapter 11 bankruptcy process in the U.S. to address its debt of over $1.5 billion, Offshore-Energy.biz reported. Formerly a part of Teekay, Altera Infrastructure is based in Westhill, Scotland and it is a supplier of infrastructure assets to the offshore energy industry. In a statement on Monday, the company said that it has executed a restructuring support agreement (the RSA) with approximately 71 percent of its funded debt obligations, which includes an investment management company Brookfield and a super-majority of its bank lenders.
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A B.C. couple who manipulated stock at the expense of people’s retirement savings will still need to repay the defrauded investors, regardless of any possible future bankruptcy proceedings, the B.C. Court of Appeal has ruled, BIV.com reported. Thalbinder Singh Poonian and Shailu Poonian are permanently barred from working in the capital markets after a British Columbia Securities Commission (BCSC) panel ruled in 2014 they misappropriated roughly $7 million from investors for their own gain.
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Scandinavian airline SAS said on Saturday it entered into an agreement with Apollo Global Management to raise $700 million of fresh financing it needs to see it through bankruptcy, Reuters reported. The airline filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States in early July to help cut debt after the collapse of wage talks between the airline and its pilots, triggering a 15-day strike that added to travel chaos across Europe. SAS said in a statement it expects to complete the Chapter 11 restructuring process in nine to 12 months.
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At the same time the cost of living is creeping ever higher, so too are the number of insolvency filings from Canadian consumers, the Toronto Star reported. Data released by the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada shows that the number of Canadians filing for personal bankruptcy may be returning to pre-pandemic levels. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, government subsidies have kept consumer debt at bay resulting in fewer bankruptcies or consumer proposals, a process where a person in debt pays a smaller percentage of owed money to their creditors.
Sergio Camacho, the chief executive of Unifin Financiera SAB de CV, was sick of the questions about the financial health of his firm, the largest shadow lender in Mexico, and he was out of patience, Bloomberg News reported. Unifin was doing well, he blurted out, and would grow its business and thrive. “The market has been irrational,” Camacho barked at one investor after cutting him off during the firm’s earnings call last month.
Endo International PLC, a pharmaceutical manufacturer facing thousands of lawsuits alleging it fueled the opioid addiction crisis, said Tuesday that it is likely to file for bankruptcy imminently, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company said that it is in negotiations with a group of senior lenders that it expects will result in an agreement for a chapter 11 filing. Endo also said that it is in discussions with opioid litigants as well as other creditors but didn’t say that it has reached a proposed deal with them.
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Mexican leasing firm Unifin will miss capital and interest payments on its debt because of limited sources of financing, the company said in a filing to Mexico's main stock exchange, Reuters reported. The decision is effective immediately "and through the period necessary to negotiate definitive agreements with (Unifin's) shareholders in relation to a strategic restructuring," it said in the filing late on Monday. Unifin shares plummeted in early trading on Tuesday, falling more than 65% to an historic low.
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Mexico’s inflation accelerated broadly in line with analysts’ estimates in July to the fastest pace since early 2001, as the central bank is seen delivering a second straight 75 basis-point increase to its key interest rate this week, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices rose 8.15% last month compared to a year earlier, slightly faster than the 8.14% median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg, the national statistics institute reported Tuesday. On a monthly basis, inflation slowed to 0.74% from 0.84% in July, versus economists’ median estimate of 0.73%.
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