After posting a loss for the fourth quarter, Credito Real said it was seeking to avoid a messy legal battle with creditors and would work to keep the company running following a default earlier this month, Bloomberg News reported. The lender that focuses on payroll loans posted a loss of 359.4 million pesos ($17.7 million) in the fourth quarter as cash levels dwindled to around $30 million. Credito Real failed to pay a 170 million Swiss franc ($184 million) bond due Feb. 9. After huddling with more than 100 representatives from creditors on Feb.

Canada's Ontario province on Monday will introduce legislation to establish a minimum wage and other rights for gig economy workers such as drivers for ride-hailing companies, Premier Doug Ford said, Reuters reported. The legislation, which Ford called a first for a Canadian province, includes clarity around hours and pay calculations. It also includes protection against dismissal from a digital platform without proper notice or explanation, and ensure tips that workers earn remain with them, Ford told reporters.

Mexico’s economy narrowly avoided recession in 2021, as manufacturers adjusted to supply chain snarls and shortages amid a lack of fiscal stimulus, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product stayed unchanged in the fourth quarter from the previous three-month period, better than the median estimate for a 0.1% decline in a Bloomberg survey, according to final data released by Mexico’s statistics institute Friday. Preliminary data last month had showed GDP falling 0.1%, which followed a 0.4% third-quarter contraction.

Mexico’s Unifin Financiera SAB said it placed the full amount it sought to raise in the local debt market on Thursday as it faced a test of confidence among investors following the default of another Mexican non-bank lender, Bloomberg News reported. The equipment leasing company sold 3 billion pesos (about $145 million) in one-year notes, according to a filing with the stock exchange. The notes have a variable rate of Mexico’s interbank rate plus 1.4 percentage points and total demand was for 3.08 billion pesos.

When the United States barred Americans from doing business with Russian banks, oil and gas developers and other companies in 2014, after the country’s invasion of Crimea, the hit to Russia’s economy was swift and immense. Economists estimated that sanctions imposed by Western nations cost Russia $50 billion a year. Since then, the global market for cryptocurrencies and other digital assets has ballooned, the New York Times reported. That’s bad news for enforcers of sanctions, and good news for Russia.

U.S. President Joe Biden unleashed sanctions targeting Russia’s sale of sovereign debt abroad and the country’s elites, responding to what he described as the start of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Bloomberg News reported. “He’s setting up a rationale to take more territory by force,” Biden said Tuesday at the White House. “This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Biden said that he’s sending an unspecified number of additional U.S. troops to the Baltics in a defensive move to defend NATO countries.

The United States Trade Representative's (USTR) office said on Tuesday it opposed Canada's plan to enact a digital services tax (DST) and urged Canada to abandon plans for such a step, Reuters reported. "The United States urges Canada to abandon any plans for a unilateral measure and instead redouble its commitment to the rapid implementation of Pillar One of the October 8 OECD/G20 agreement and the negotiation of a multilateral convention", the USTR office said in a statement.

When Honduran President Xiomara Castro sent the bond market into a tailspin just minutes after taking office last month, it all seemed like some big misunderstanding, Bloomberg News reported. That same day, Pedro Barquero, Castro’s economy minister, rushed to clarify that she had meant to say in her inaugural address that the government should “refinance” its debts, not “restructure” them. This was plausible enough. Politicians not steeped in the intricacies of high finance have been mixing those two words up for decades.

Canadian retail sales most likely rose 2.4% in January from December, preliminary data from Statistics Canada showed on Friday, following on a 1.8% decline in December as consumers stayed home amid concerns over the Omicron coronavirus variant, Reuters reported. Retail sales totaled C$57.05 billion ($44.91 billion) in December, down from C$58.06 billion in November. For full year 2021, retail sales came in at C$674 billion, an all-time record, Statscan said. In December, sales were down in eight of 11 subsectors, representing 41.7% of retail trade.

Canadian banks have begun cutting off financial services to people linked with ongoing anti-vaccine-mandate demonstrations in Canada, an unprecedented use of financial power following an emergency order from the government, the Wall Street Journal reported. With protesters occupying the streets of Canada’s capital, Ottawa, and several border crossings blockaded until recently, the government has used emergency powers to put the nation’s financial institutions in the unusual position of using their anti-money-laundering and sanctions expertise to crack down on banking customers.